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  1. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 New JavaScript Database (JSDB) release

    • Fix: Now properly handling array indices on `JSTable.PERSIST` events in the `keypath` property that’s passed to the event handler.

    Just noticed that the pretty keypaths of the JavaScript deltas written to the append-only log were ignoring array indices while playing with a new database introspection call I’m adding to the Kitten Interactive Shell (REPL) and fixed it.

    I’ll be updating Kitten shortly to use this version of JSDB and I haven’t forgotten my promise to record a little video of the new Kitten Introspection API.

    Enjoy!

    💕

    codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r

    #JavaScriptDatabase #javascript #database #JSDB #SmallTech #SmallWeb #NodeJS

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #database #jsdb #smalltech #smallweb
  2. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 New JavaScript Database (JSDB) release

    • Fix: Now properly handling array indices on `JSTable.PERSIST` events in the `keypath` property that’s passed to the event handler.

    Just noticed that the pretty keypaths of the JavaScript deltas written to the append-only log were ignoring array indices while playing with a new database introspection call I’m adding to the Kitten Interactive Shell (REPL) and fixed it.

    I’ll be updating Kitten shortly to use this version of JSDB and I haven’t forgotten my promise to record a little video of the new Kitten Introspection API.

    Enjoy!

    💕

    codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r

    #JavaScriptDatabase #javascript #database #JSDB #SmallTech #SmallWeb #NodeJS

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #database #jsdb #smalltech #smallweb
  3. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 New JavaScript Database (JSDB) release

    • Fix: Now properly handling array indices on `JSTable.PERSIST` events in the `keypath` property that’s passed to the event handler.

    Just noticed that the pretty keypaths of the JavaScript deltas written to the append-only log were ignoring array indices while playing with a new database introspection call I’m adding to the Kitten Interactive Shell (REPL) and fixed it.

    I’ll be updating Kitten shortly to use this version of JSDB and I haven’t forgotten my promise to record a little video of the new Kitten Introspection API.

    Enjoy!

    💕

    codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r

    #JavaScriptDatabase #javascript #database #JSDB #SmallTech #SmallWeb #NodeJS

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #database #jsdb #smalltech #smallweb
  4. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 New JavaScript Database (JSDB) release

    • Fix: Now properly handling array indices on `JSTable.PERSIST` events in the `keypath` property that’s passed to the event handler.

    Just noticed that the pretty keypaths of the JavaScript deltas written to the append-only log were ignoring array indices while playing with a new database introspection call I’m adding to the Kitten Interactive Shell (REPL) and fixed it.

    I’ll be updating Kitten shortly to use this version of JSDB and I haven’t forgotten my promise to record a little video of the new Kitten Introspection API.

    Enjoy!

    💕

    codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r

    #JavaScriptDatabase #javascript #database #JSDB #SmallTech #SmallWeb #NodeJS

    #nodejs #smallweb #smalltech #jsdb #database #javascript
  5. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 New JavaScript Database (JSDB) release

    • Fix: Now properly handling array indices on `JSTable.PERSIST` events in the `keypath` property that’s passed to the event handler.

    Just noticed that the pretty keypaths of the JavaScript deltas written to the append-only log were ignoring array indices while playing with a new database introspection call I’m adding to the Kitten Interactive Shell (REPL) and fixed it.

    I’ll be updating Kitten shortly to use this version of JSDB and I haven’t forgotten my promise to record a little video of the new Kitten Introspection API.

    Enjoy!

    💕

    codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r

    #JavaScriptDatabase #javascript #database #JSDB #SmallTech #SmallWeb #NodeJS

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #database #jsdb #smalltech #smallweb
  6. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 JavaScript Database (JSDB)¹ version 7.0.0 released

    - *Breaking change* JSTable.PERSIST event now uses a parameter object with properties for `type`, `keypath`, `value`, `change`, and `table`. This should make listening for events on your databases much nicer to author. e.g., a snippet from Catalyst² I’m working on:

    ```js
    const settingsTable = db.settings['__table__']
    const JSTable = settingsTable.constructor

    settingsTable.addListener(JSTable.PERSIST, ({ keypath, value }) => {
    switch (keypath) {
    case 'servers.serverPoolSize':
    console.info('New server pool size requested', value)
    this.updateServerPool()
    break
    // etc.
    }
    })
    ```

    This new version of JSDB is not in the latest Kitten³ yet as it is a breaking change and I want to make sure I update my sites/apps first if needed. I should have it integrated tomorrow.

    To see the simple use case for JSDB in Kitten (the default untyped database that’s easy to get started with and perfect for quick experiments, little sites, etc.), see: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For a more advanced tutorial for creating your own typed databases in Kitten, see the Database App Modules tutorial: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For another example, see: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/#

    Full change log: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/s

    Enjoy!

    💕

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r
    ² catalyst.small-web.org
    ³ kitten.small-web.org

    #JavaScriptDatabase #JavaScript #appendOnlyLog #JS #JSDB #JSDBUpdates #SmallTech #SmallWeb #Kitten #Catalyst

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #appendonlylog #js #jsdb #jsdbupdates
  7. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 JavaScript Database (JSDB)¹ version 7.0.0 released

    - *Breaking change* JSTable.PERSIST event now uses a parameter object with properties for `type`, `keypath`, `value`, `change`, and `table`. This should make listening for events on your databases much nicer to author. e.g., a snippet from Catalyst² I’m working on:

    ```js
    const settingsTable = db.settings['__table__']
    const JSTable = settingsTable.constructor

    settingsTable.addListener(JSTable.PERSIST, ({ keypath, value }) => {
    switch (keypath) {
    case 'servers.serverPoolSize':
    console.info('New server pool size requested', value)
    this.updateServerPool()
    break
    // etc.
    }
    })
    ```

    This new version of JSDB is not in the latest Kitten³ yet as it is a breaking change and I want to make sure I update my sites/apps first if needed. I should have it integrated tomorrow.

    To see the simple use case for JSDB in Kitten (the default untyped database that’s easy to get started with and perfect for quick experiments, little sites, etc.), see: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For a more advanced tutorial for creating your own typed databases in Kitten, see the Database App Modules tutorial: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For another example, see: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/#

    Full change log: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/s

    Enjoy!

    💕

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r
    ² catalyst.small-web.org
    ³ kitten.small-web.org

    #JavaScriptDatabase #JavaScript #appendOnlyLog #JS #JSDB #JSDBUpdates #SmallTech #SmallWeb #Kitten #Catalyst

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #appendonlylog #js #jsdb #jsdbupdates
  8. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 JavaScript Database (JSDB)¹ version 7.0.0 released

    - *Breaking change* JSTable.PERSIST event now uses a parameter object with properties for `type`, `keypath`, `value`, `change`, and `table`. This should make listening for events on your databases much nicer to author. e.g., a snippet from Catalyst² I’m working on:

    ```js
    const settingsTable = db.settings['__table__']
    const JSTable = settingsTable.constructor

    settingsTable.addListener(JSTable.PERSIST, ({ keypath, value }) => {
    switch (keypath) {
    case 'servers.serverPoolSize':
    console.info('New server pool size requested', value)
    this.updateServerPool()
    break
    // etc.
    }
    })
    ```

    This new version of JSDB is not in the latest Kitten³ yet as it is a breaking change and I want to make sure I update my sites/apps first if needed. I should have it integrated tomorrow.

    To see the simple use case for JSDB in Kitten (the default untyped database that’s easy to get started with and perfect for quick experiments, little sites, etc.), see: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For a more advanced tutorial for creating your own typed databases in Kitten, see the Database App Modules tutorial: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For another example, see: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/#

    Full change log: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/s

    Enjoy!

    💕

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r
    ² catalyst.small-web.org
    ³ kitten.small-web.org

    #JavaScriptDatabase #JavaScript #appendOnlyLog #JS #JSDB #JSDBUpdates #SmallTech #SmallWeb #Kitten #Catalyst

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #appendonlylog #js #jsdb #jsdbupdates
  9. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 JavaScript Database (JSDB)¹ version 7.0.0 released

    - *Breaking change* JSTable.PERSIST event now uses a parameter object with properties for `type`, `keypath`, `value`, `change`, and `table`. This should make listening for events on your databases much nicer to author. e.g., a snippet from Catalyst² I’m working on:

    ```js
    const settingsTable = db.settings['__table__']
    const JSTable = settingsTable.constructor

    settingsTable.addListener(JSTable.PERSIST, ({ keypath, value }) => {
    switch (keypath) {
    case 'servers.serverPoolSize':
    console.info('New server pool size requested', value)
    this.updateServerPool()
    break
    // etc.
    }
    })
    ```

    This new version of JSDB is not in the latest Kitten³ yet as it is a breaking change and I want to make sure I update my sites/apps first if needed. I should have it integrated tomorrow.

    To see the simple use case for JSDB in Kitten (the default untyped database that’s easy to get started with and perfect for quick experiments, little sites, etc.), see: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For a more advanced tutorial for creating your own typed databases in Kitten, see the Database App Modules tutorial: kitten.small-web.org/tutorials

    For another example, see: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/#

    Full change log: codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb/s

    Enjoy!

    💕

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/jsdb#r
    ² catalyst.small-web.org
    ³ kitten.small-web.org

    #JavaScriptDatabase #JavaScript #appendOnlyLog #JS #JSDB #JSDBUpdates #SmallTech #SmallWeb #Kitten #Catalyst

    #javascriptdatabase #javascript #appendonlylog #js #jsdb #jsdbupdates
  10. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    So a little while back, @laura wrote an excellent introductory book on accessibility and inclusive design called Accessibility for Everyone for A Book Apart.

    Then, A Book Apart folded and the authors managed to get their rights back.

    And yesterday, after Laura put a huge amount of work adapting the book into a beautiful website she built using Kitten*, we republished the book under Small Technology Foundation Press.

    You can read it for free at:
    accessibilityforeveryone.site/

    If you want to support our work that makes such things possible, please consider becoming a patron of Small Technology Foundation. We’re tiny, independent, and not for profit. We reject all types of equity investment (VC, etc.) and won’t be sponsored by or otherwise allow our legitimacy to be used to whitewash Big Tech.

    small-tech.org/fund-us

    * kitten.small-web.org

    #accessibilityForEveryone #LauraKalbag #accessibility #a11y #inclusivity #usability #ethics #web #design #SmallTech

    #laurakalbag #accessibility #inclusivity #usability #ethics #web
  11. Sky Dancing @[email protected] ·

    Lazy Caturday Reads: Just Another Crazy Day in the USA

    Good Afternoon!!

    Sophia and her kitten, by Lena Revo

    It’s just another crazy day in the USA. Our “president” is a madman who has surrounded himself with sycophants and assorted insane groupies. The news today is just as insane as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before that. What else can I say? Here’s what’s happening as of this morning.

    The top story is still the Comey indictment.

    The Wall Street Journal: Trump Overcame Internal Dissent to Get His Case Against Comey.

    President Trump asked advisers directly last week: Where were the prosecutions that he wanted to see?

    He had been hearing from allies that the Justice Department wasn’t moving aggressively against the people who had investigated and prosecuted him, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief among them was former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey.

    Senior Justice Department officials told him the evidence against Comey wasn’t a slam dunk, and prosecutors in Virginia didn’t want to bring the case. Other White House officials worried that such a case could end badly.

    Trump told the DOJ officials to make the best case they could, officials said. He said any lack of evidence was just like what he faced in his own criminal cases, the people said.

    On Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered, extracting from a grand jury a two-count indictment against Comey related to five-year-old congressional testimony. Comey says he is innocent. The grand jury appeared to have some doubts, rejecting one additional count against Comey.

    In the process, Bondi has effectively transformed the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, from an independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.

    The Comey family is in Trump’s crosshairs.

    Comey, who oversaw the initial 2016 investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia that dogged much of the president’s first term, has emerged as one of the Justice Department’s biggest targets for retribution along with his family.

    In July, it fired Comey’s daughter, Maurene Comey, who had been a star federal prosecutor in Manhattan, with a supervisor telling her only that the decision “came from Washington.” On Thursday, Troy Edwards Jr., a son-in-law married to another daughter, resigned from the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, saying that he was doing so to uphold his oath to the Constitution.

    “My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said in a video after his indictment. The longtime Republican served as a senior Justice Department official in the administration of President George W. Bush and was nominated as the FBI director by President Barack Obama, before Trump fired him in 2017….

    …Comey’s indictment thrust the Justice Department into uncharted territory, with Trump’s clearest breach yet of rules designed to insulate the agency from partisan pressure after the Watergate scandal roiled the agency more than five decades ago.

    Tensions over the case came to a head last week after some administration officials, including Ed Martin, a Justice Department official pursuing cases of interest to Trump, privately told the president that the Justice Department was slow-walking cases against Trump critics, people familiar with the discussions said.

    The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, had told colleagues he didn’t see a case against Comey or Democratic New York Attorney General Letitia James, people familiar with the matter said.

    Last Thursday, an administration official called Siebert and told him he would likely be fired.

    Kat, Cat, by Katherine Ace

    According to the WSJ, AG Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche defended Siebert, but to no avail. Trump replaced Sibert with Lindsey Halligan, an insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case. Halligan then presented the case to a grand jury by herself and obtained 2 indictment of Comey. Only 14 of 23 grand jurors voted to indict him on 2 of 3 counts. Apparently, Bondi is in the Trump’s dog house now, although he’s telling people he still likes her. Trump said yesterday he expected and hoped for more indictments of his political enemies.

    CBS News: Judge who reviewed James Comey’s indictment was confused by prosecutor’s handling of case, transcript shows.

    U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala expressed confusion and surprise at some points during the seven-minute court session when a federal grand jury impaneled in Alexandria, Virginia,  returned the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey Thursday night.

    According to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by CBS News, Judge Vaala asked the newly named interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan — a former Trump personal lawyer — why there were two versions of the indictment.

    A majority of the grand jury that reviewed the Comey matter voted not to charge him with one of the three counts presented by prosecutors, according to a form that was signed by the grand jury’s foreperson and filed in court. He was indicted on two other counts — making false statements to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding — after 14 of 23 jurors voted in favor of them, the foreperson told the judge.

    But two versions of the indictment were published on the case docket: one with the dropped third count, and one without. The transcript reveals why this occurred.

    “So this has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents that are in the Mr. Comey case that are inconsistent with one another,” Vaala said to Halligan. “There seems to be a discrepancy. They’re both signed by the (grand jury) foreperson.”

    Halligan didn’t know why two versions had been published and claimed she had only seen the one with two indictments–which she had signed herself, presumably because no line prosecutor had been willing to do so. The questioning went on for awhile.

    I wonder who Halligan will find to prosecute the case? Will she do it herself? Comey has a very good attorney, Patrick Fitzgerald, remember him? He was the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case during the George W. Bush administration.

    Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney at Politico: Why the case against James Comey may end in humiliation for Trump’s DOJ.

    The indictment of James Comey, ordered up by President Donald Trump in a breathtaking breach of Justice Department independence, is being welcomed with glee in MAGA circles.

    But the case against the former FBI director and longtime Trump nemesis may quickly end in disappointment — and even humiliation — for the prosecutor who was conscripted by the president to bring the charges.

    Nataliya Bagatskaya, A Glass of Milk

    The bare-bones indictment secured by that prosecutor, Trump loyalist Lindsey Halligan, is exceptionally weak, former prosecutors and legal experts say. Fundamental problems with the case itself — as well as the unusual events that preceded the indictment — will make it difficult to bring Comey to trial, let alone secure a conviction.

    Former federal terrorism prosecutor Andy McCarthy called the charges “poorly done” and predicted they will be thrown out by a judge well before any trial.

    “The whole thing is just bizarro,” McCarthy said. “This is the kind of thing that should never ever happen. … This case should never go to trial because it’s obvious from the four corners of the indictment that there’s no case.”

    The issues that could doom the case include the overt political pressure by Trump to bring the indictment, Halligan’s own inexperience, peculiarities in the indictment itself and even a five-year-old technology issue.

    Read all the details at Politico.

    Alan Feuer at The New York Times (gift link): Trump’s Repeated Attacks May Undercut Case Against Comey.

    Even before James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, was indicted this week, legal experts were already questioning whether the case might be vulnerable to an uncommon but powerful legal attack: allegations that President Trump, who has long called for Mr. Comey to be jailed, had pushed the Justice Department into opening an improper vindictive prosecution.

    Such speculation gained at least a little steam this week after Mr. Trump weighed in on the charges, which center on whether Mr. Comey lied to Congress, in a manner that seemed to prejudge his guilt.

    “Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!” Mr. Trump wrote on social media on Friday morning. “It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it.”

    The remarks by Mr. Trump were not the first time he had shared — or over-shared — his opinions about whether Mr. Comey should be prosecuted, evincing what defense lawyers may seek to argue was a political animus by the Justice Department.

    By Stu Morris

    Last weekend, in an even more pointed social media post, Mr. Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to immediately get to work prosecuting Mr. Comey and two of his other enemies, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, and Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California.

    “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Mr. Trump wrote, adding, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

    While vindictive prosecution motions are notoriously difficult to win, the president’s voluble vitriol and his incessant need to be on the attack could provide defense lawyers with an avenue to protect the very people he most wants to punish.

    “Ironically, by demanding the prosecutions, Trump may have undercut any possibility of success by providing the people on his ‘enemies list’ with a built-in defense,” Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, wrote in a recent blog post on the subject.

    Use the gift link to read the rest if you’re interested.

    Trump has chosen the next city to get his fascist beatdown–Portland, Oregon.

    AP: Trump says he’ll send troops to Portland, Oregon, in latest deployment to US cities.

    President Donald Trump said Saturday he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, “authorizing Full Force, if necessary” to handle “domestic terrorists” as he expands his controversial deployments to more American cities.

    He made the announcement on social media, writing that he was directing the Department of Defense to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland.”

    Trump said the decision was necessary to protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, which he described as “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

    The White House did not immediately respond to a request for details on Trump’s announcement, such as a timeline for the deployment or what troops would be involved. He previously threatened to send the National Guard into Chicago without following through. A deployment in Memphis, Tennessee, is expected to include only about 150 troops, far less than were sent to the District of Columbia for Trump’s crackdown or in Los Angeles in response to immigration protests….

    The ICE facility in Portland has been the target of frequent demonstrations, sometimes leading to violent clashes. Some federal agents have been injured and several protesters have been charged with assault. When protesters erected a guillotine earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security described it as “unhinged behavior.” [….]

    “We’re going to get out there and we’re going to do a pretty big number on those people in Portland,” he said, describing them as “professional agitators and anarchists.”

    The Washington Post: Trump deploys troops to Portland, authorizing ‘full force’ if necessary.

    President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will send troops to Portland, Oregon, and to immigration detention facilities around the country, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” and escalating a campaign to use the U.S. military against Americans that has little modern precedent….

    Portrait with Cat by Arsen Kurbanov

    Portland has been a target of right-wing politicians for the way it has handled racial-justice protests as well as its homeless population, tolerating encampments in the central part of the city. But Trump will again encounter the dynamic he did when he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles — a military deployment in a state run by a Democratic governor who objects to the decision and will have grounds to fight it in court.

    It was not immediately clear whether Trump plans to deploy active-duty troops, National Guard members, or both, to Portland. As was the case in similar discussions in other cities, there are legal limits to how he can do so.

    One official familiar with the discussion on Saturday said defense officials were seeking clarity on what Trump desires in this situation. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly about private planning.

    wweek.com Portland: Federal Agents Amass in Portland, Local Officials Say.

    President Donald Trump has dispatched federal agents to Portland, local elected officials said in a hastily scheduled press conference on Friday night. Those agents have amassed at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office on the South Waterfront and have been observed in other locations across the city, officials said.

    “We now have a sudden influx of federal agents in our city,” Mayor Keith Wilson said. “We did not ask for them to come. They are here without precedent or purpose.”

    Over and over, officials described the agents’ arrival as an attempt to goad residents into a confrontation that would give the president a pretext for a military crackdown.

    “This is the ‘Don’t take the bait’ press conference,” said U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). “Their goal is to create an engagement—an engagement that will lead to conflict. President Trump has one goal. His goal is to make Portland look like what he’s been describing it as. Let’s not grant him that wish.”

    The phalanx of local officials assembled at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Northeast Portland—ranging from the majority of city councilors to two members of Congress—admitted they weren’t sure whether the federal ingress into Portland consisted of military officers or merely agents from the Federal Protective Service.

    More details at the link.

    We may soon learn how much damage Trump has done to the National Weather Service.

    Hannah Natanson and Brady Dennis at The Washington Post (gift link): National Weather Service at ‘breaking point’ as storm approaches.

    Some National Weather Service staffers are working double shifts to keep forecasting offices open. Others are operating under a “buddy system,” in which adjacent offices help monitor severe weather in understaffed regions. Still others are jettisoning services deemed not absolutely necessary, such as making presentations to schoolchildren.

    The Trump administration’s cuts to the Weather Service — where nearly 600 workers,or about 1 in every 7, have left through firings, resignations or retirements — are pushing the agency to its limits, according to interviews with current and former staffers.

    By Ramy Salah Hefny

    The incoming head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has promised to prioritize filling those jobs, and the White House recently granted the Weather Service an exemption from a government-wide hiring freeze. But as the Atlantic hurricane season peaks and wildfires ramp up in the West, hundreds of positions remain vacant, staff said. Forecasters are currently watching two storms, including one that could pose a threat for the eastern United States by early next week.

    So far, exhausted employees have maintained weather monitoring and forecasting almost without interruption, staff said. But many are wondering how much longer they can keep it up. If the government shuts down next week when funding runs out, many employees could also find themselves working without pay, at least temporarily.

    “We have a strained and severely stretched situation,” said Tom Fahy, legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, the union that represents the agency’s workers. The Weather Service has a famously dedicated workforce, he said, but workers can put in only so many long hours and extra shifts. “There’s a breaking point.”

    Fahy said two offices — one in California’s Central Valley and another in western Kansas — no longer have enough staffing to operate around the clock. And, he added, “there are still a dozen offices across the country that are operating on reduced staffs.”

    Use the gift link if you want to read more.

    Pete Hegseth’s power play

    I’m sure you’ve heard about the weird meeting Pete Hegseth has order hundreds of top military officers to attend in person.

    Natasha Bertrand and Alayna Treen at CNN: Hegseth’s surprise gathering of top military brass is to deliver speech on ‘warrior ethos,’ sources say.

    Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s surprise gathering of hundreds of generals and admirals in Virginia next week is being called so he can describe the administration’s reinvention of the Department of Defense as the “Department of War” and outline new standards for military personnel, according to half a dozen people familiar with the planning.

    “It’s meant to be a show of force of what the new military now looks like under the president,” a White House official told CNN.

    The meeting is expected to resemble “a pep rally” where Hegseth will underscore the importance of the “warrior ethos” and outline a new vision for the US military, said three of the sources. He is expected to discuss new readiness, fitness and grooming standards the officers are expected to adhere to and enforce.

    “It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” said a defense official familiar with the planning. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”

    WTF?!

    Hegseth’s team is planning on recording his speech and releasing it publicly later, three of the sources said, and the White House is planning to amplify it, the White House official said.

    As of Friday, there were no plans for Hegseth to make a major national security-related announcement as part of the meeting, all of the sources said, making it even more surprising that he has ordered the officers to attend in person and leave their posts for what will essentially be a major speech.

    By Ektarina Yastrebova

    As of now, there isn’t expected to be a weapons showcase for the officers as President Donald Trump suggested, according to the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning. Trump is not currently planning to be involved or attend the meeting on Tuesday, two officials told CNN.

    The original idea for the unprecedented gathering of generals and admirals was Hegseth’s, the White House official and one of the sources familiar with the planning said. Hegseth later let the White House know about the plans, but Trump himself knew very little about the details when he was asked about it in the Oval Office on Thursday, the White House official said.

    I’m no military expert, but isn’t it kind of dangerous to have our enemies know that all those top generals and admirals will be in one room for an hour or so?

    The Guardian: US military brass brace for firings as Pentagon chief orders top-level meeting.

    US military officials are reportedly bracing for possible firings or demotions after the Trump administration’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, abruptly summoned hundreds of generals and admirals from around the world to attend a gathering in Virginia in the upcoming days.

    The event, scheduled for Tuesday at Marine Corps University in Quantico, is expected to feature a short address by Hegseth focused on military standards and the “warrior ethos”, according to the Washington Post.

    The order to attend the meeting, which has been described as unusual and unprecedented, was reportedly issued with little explanation – and prompted military personnel stationed overseas to have to make last-minute travel arrangements.

    A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the upcoming gathering to the Guardian, saying that Hegseth “will meet with his senior military leaders”, but did not provide any further details.

    According to the Times, the Pentagon informed congressional committees overseeing the military on Friday that Hegseth intends to use the gathering to share with “most senior service members his intent for the department”, including new guidance on “military fitness standards and several other areas of interest”.

    Sources cited by the Post say that Tuesday’s address will be the first of three short lectures by Hegseth. The second, the Post reported, will reportedly focus on the defense industrial base, and the third on deterrence.

    More stories of possible interest

    The New York Times: Trump Fired a U.S. Attorney Who Insisted on Following a Court Order.

    Shuyler Mitchell at Mother Jones: “Extremely Disturbing”: What Does Trump’s “Antifa” Executive Order Actually

    Do?

    Claire McCaskill at MSNBC: Hegseth’s mystery military meeting broadcasts a damaging message of U.S. instability.

    The New York Times: F.B.I. Fires More Agents, Including Those Who Knelt During Racial Justice Protests.

    CNN: ‘I’m absolutely terrified’: Federal workers brace for potential government shutdown, mass layoffs.

    That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?

    #catArt #caturday #DonaldTrump #JamesComey #LindseyHalligan #NationalWeatherService #PamBondi #PeteHegseth #PortlandOR #ToddBlanche

    #catart #caturday #donaldtrump #jamescomey #lindseyhalligan #nationalweatherservice
  12. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    So, going forward, Auto Encrypt¹, Kitten², and Catalyst³ will be seamlessly (automatically; with zero config) supporting Web Numbers⁴ (IPv4, IPv6), and, of course, should you want to point one at your server for old time’s sake, legacy domain names too.

    I still have some dev to do on this on the Kitten side of things but I’m hugely excited about being able to remove another centralised component – DNS – from the Small Web⁵ (peer-to-peer, personal web) as we inch nearer to making it available this year to everyday people who use technology as an everyday thing.

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ catalyst.small-web.org
    ⁴ ar.al/2025/06/25/web-numbers/
    ⁵ ar.al/2024/06/24/small-web-com

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #SmallTechnologyFoundation #peerToPeerWeb #personalWeb #WebNumbers #decentralisation #web #dev #humanRights #democracy

    #smallweb #smalltech #smalltechnologyfoundation #peertopeerweb #personalweb #webnumbers
  13. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 Minor releases

    • Auto Encrypt 5.1.0: Moves automatic IP address detection from top-level await to asynchronous createServer() method to enable servers that import to run offline when they’re running on localhost) and exports IPAddresses class so servers can carry out their own automatic IP address detection (IPv4 and IPv6) if they want full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.¹

    • @small-tech/https: Re-exports IPAddresses class so servers (like Kitten²) can have full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.³

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ codeberg.org/small-tech/https/

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #AutoEncrypt #https #releaseUpdates

    #smallweb #smalltech #autoencrypt #https #releaseupdates
  14. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    Auto Encrypt version 4.1.0 released

    • Removes OCSP stapling, as Let’s Encrypt is removing OCSP support.

    If you’re already using Auto Encrypt upgrade before May or your certificate renewals will start to fail. Upgrade now if you want to get certificates for new domains as new certificate requests are already failing.

    codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e

    Auto Encrypt automatically provisions and renews Let’s Encrypt TLS certificates on Node.js https servers (including Kitten¹, Polka, Express.js, etc.)

    Regular Node.js HTTPS server (without Let’s Encrypt certificates):

    ```js
    import https from 'node:https'
    const server = https.createServer(…)
    ```

    Auto Encrypt https server with automatic Let’s Encrypt certificates:

    ```js
    import AutoEncrypt from '@small-tech/auto-encrypt'
    const server = AutoEncrypt.https.createServer(…)
    ```

    (Certificates are provisioned on first hit and automatically renewed 30 days before expiry.)

    ¹ kitten.small-web.org

    #AutoEncrypt #LetsEncrypt #TLS #SSL #HTTPS #NodeJS #JavaScript #servers #web #dev #SmallWeb #SmallTech #FOSS

    #autoencrypt #letsencrypt #tls #ssl #https #nodejs
  15. Max Headroom @[email protected] ·

    Hello everyone!

    I'm a recent arrival, still figuring things out, but #QOTO seems delightful so far!

    About me:
    * Electrical engineer (chiphead) by training.
    * Software architect/dev-herder (of late) by vocation.
    * Computational quantum chemist by avocation.
    * Tool-builder by compulsion.

    Designed chips, joined/lead a few startups, VC wannabe for awhile. Then the wavefunction collapsed.

    Technophile.
    Autodidact.
    ADHD sufferer/beneficiary.
    Burner (the Man).
    Dysthymic.
    Romantic.
    Kitten foster Dad.

    I learn differently than others.

    #Engineering #QuantumMechanics #QuantumPhysics #QuantumChemistry #MonteCarloSimulation #ComputerArchitecture #Software

    #engineering #quantummechanics #quantumphysics #montecarlosimulation #software #qoto
  16. Just Another Blue Teamer @[email protected] ·

    Good day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday!

    In a recent report by Bitdefender Labs, they took a deep-dive into the threat group #CharmingKitten and their latest malware, #BellaCiao. It is a great read, but some main behaviors that I pulled from the report included:

    #DefenseEvasion:
    T1562.001 - Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
    Charming Kitten used powershell to disable real-time monitoring on the machine to avoid detection.

    #Persistence:
    T1053.005 - Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
    They also created scheduled tasks to run on start and used the technique of masquerading their process names to blend in.

    #Execution:
    The Bitdefender team provided the locations that the executables were written to.

    You should go and check out this #readoftheday, it contains great technical details that you can use to improve your threat hunting skill.
    Enjoy and Happy Hunting!

    #CyberSecurity #ITSecurity #InfoSec #BlueTeam #ThreatIntel #ThreatHunting #ThreatDetection #HappyHunting

    #charmingkitten #bellaciao #defenseevasion #persistence #execution #readoftheday
  17. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 Minor releases

    • Auto Encrypt 5.1.0: Moves automatic IP address detection from top-level await to asynchronous createServer() method to enable servers that import to run offline when they’re running on localhost) and exports IPAddresses class so servers can carry out their own automatic IP address detection (IPv4 and IPv6) if they want full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.¹

    • @small-tech/https: Re-exports IPAddresses class so servers (like Kitten²) can have full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.³

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ codeberg.org/small-tech/https/

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #AutoEncrypt #https #releaseUpdates

    #smallweb #smalltech #autoencrypt #https #releaseupdates
  18. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 Minor releases

    • Auto Encrypt 5.1.0: Moves automatic IP address detection from top-level await to asynchronous createServer() method to enable servers that import to run offline when they’re running on localhost) and exports IPAddresses class so servers can carry out their own automatic IP address detection (IPv4 and IPv6) if they want full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.¹

    • @small-tech/https: Re-exports IPAddresses class so servers (like Kitten²) can have full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.³

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ codeberg.org/small-tech/https/

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #AutoEncrypt #https #releaseUpdates

    #smallweb #smalltech #autoencrypt #https #releaseupdates
  19. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 Minor releases

    • Auto Encrypt 5.1.0: Moves automatic IP address detection from top-level await to asynchronous createServer() method to enable servers that import to run offline when they’re running on localhost) and exports IPAddresses class so servers can carry out their own automatic IP address detection (IPv4 and IPv6) if they want full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.¹

    • @small-tech/https: Re-exports IPAddresses class so servers (like Kitten²) can have full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.³

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ codeberg.org/small-tech/https/

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #AutoEncrypt #https #releaseUpdates

    #releaseupdates #https #autoencrypt #smalltech #smallweb
  20. Aral Balkan @[email protected] ·

    🥳 Minor releases

    • Auto Encrypt 5.1.0: Moves automatic IP address detection from top-level await to asynchronous createServer() method to enable servers that import to run offline when they’re running on localhost) and exports IPAddresses class so servers can carry out their own automatic IP address detection (IPv4 and IPv6) if they want full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.¹

    • @small-tech/https: Re-exports IPAddresses class so servers (like Kitten²) can have full control over exactly which domains and IP addresses are included in provisioned TLS certificates.³

    ¹ codeberg.org/small-tech/auto-e
    ² kitten.small-web.org
    ³ codeberg.org/small-tech/https/

    #SmallWeb #SmallTech #AutoEncrypt #https #releaseUpdates

    #smallweb #smalltech #autoencrypt #https #releaseupdates
  21. Just Another Blue Teamer @[email protected] ·

    Good day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday!

    In a recent report by Bitdefender Labs, they took a deep-dive into the threat group #CharmingKitten and their latest malware, #BellaCiao. It is a great read, but some main behaviors that I pulled from the report included:

    #DefenseEvasion:
    T1562.001 - Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
    Charming Kitten used powershell to disable real-time monitoring on the machine to avoid detection.

    #Persistence:
    T1053.005 - Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
    They also created scheduled tasks to run on start and used the technique of masquerading their process names to blend in.

    #Execution:
    The Bitdefender team provided the locations that the executables were written to.

    You should go and check out this #readoftheday, it contains great technical details that you can use to improve your threat hunting skill.
    Enjoy and Happy Hunting!

    #CyberSecurity #ITSecurity #InfoSec #BlueTeam #ThreatIntel #ThreatHunting #ThreatDetection #HappyHunting

    #charmingkitten #bellaciao #defenseevasion #persistence #execution #readoftheday
  22. Just Another Blue Teamer @[email protected] ·

    Good day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday!

    In a recent report by Bitdefender Labs, they took a deep-dive into the threat group #CharmingKitten and their latest malware, #BellaCiao. It is a great read, but some main behaviors that I pulled from the report included:

    #DefenseEvasion:
    T1562.001 - Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
    Charming Kitten used powershell to disable real-time monitoring on the machine to avoid detection.

    #Persistence:
    T1053.005 - Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
    They also created scheduled tasks to run on start and used the technique of masquerading their process names to blend in.

    #Execution:
    The Bitdefender team provided the locations that the executables were written to.

    You should go and check out this #readoftheday, it contains great technical details that you can use to improve your threat hunting skill.
    Enjoy and Happy Hunting!

    #CyberSecurity #ITSecurity #InfoSec #BlueTeam #ThreatIntel #ThreatHunting #ThreatDetection #HappyHunting

    #charmingkitten #bellaciao #defenseevasion #persistence #execution #readoftheday
  23. Just Another Blue Teamer @[email protected] ·

    Good day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday!

    In a recent report by Bitdefender Labs, they took a deep-dive into the threat group #CharmingKitten and their latest malware, #BellaCiao. It is a great read, but some main behaviors that I pulled from the report included:

    #DefenseEvasion:
    T1562.001 - Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
    Charming Kitten used powershell to disable real-time monitoring on the machine to avoid detection.

    #Persistence:
    T1053.005 - Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
    They also created scheduled tasks to run on start and used the technique of masquerading their process names to blend in.

    #Execution:
    The Bitdefender team provided the locations that the executables were written to.

    You should go and check out this #readoftheday, it contains great technical details that you can use to improve your threat hunting skill.
    Enjoy and Happy Hunting!

    #CyberSecurity #ITSecurity #InfoSec #BlueTeam #ThreatIntel #ThreatHunting #ThreatDetection #HappyHunting

    #happyhunting #threatdetection #threathunting #threatintel #blueteam #infosec
  24. Just Another Blue Teamer @[email protected] ·

    Good day everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying their Wednesday!

    In a recent report by Bitdefender Labs, they took a deep-dive into the threat group #CharmingKitten and their latest malware, #BellaCiao. It is a great read, but some main behaviors that I pulled from the report included:

    #DefenseEvasion:
    T1562.001 - Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools
    Charming Kitten used powershell to disable real-time monitoring on the machine to avoid detection.

    #Persistence:
    T1053.005 - Scheduled Task/Job: Scheduled Task
    They also created scheduled tasks to run on start and used the technique of masquerading their process names to blend in.

    #Execution:
    The Bitdefender team provided the locations that the executables were written to.

    You should go and check out this #readoftheday, it contains great technical details that you can use to improve your threat hunting skill.
    Enjoy and Happy Hunting!

    #CyberSecurity #ITSecurity #InfoSec #BlueTeam #ThreatIntel #ThreatHunting #ThreatDetection #HappyHunting

    #charmingkitten #bellaciao #defenseevasion #persistence #execution #readoftheday
  25. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Dr. A.N. Grier

    To anyone who actually found 2025 to be a solid-to-great year, I envy you. For me, 2025 was one of the absolute worst years of my life. And that counts divorce and suicidal years. With many of you, it began with working my ass off to keep my job in these trying times of financial uncertainty—especially with AI rearing its ugly fucking head. Well, that’s before that bubble bursts and causes more issues than it did before. Then, after returning from a NYC work trip, my 19-year-old black devil, King, collapsed from liver failure, resulting in having to put down a feline friend I’ve raised since a kitten and who I had as my companion for nearly half my life. Jump ahead a few months and, out of the fucking blue, my father collapses in the yard, never to regain consciousness again. With months of heartbreak and stress coming down on my heart like a rain shower of titanium dildos, some professionals were convinced I suffered a literal heart attack. After months of tests and medications, it’s clear that age and stress have crept up on me. The result of all this shit led to one of the worst years of productivity in the sacred halls of Angry Metal Guy. So, I apologize to everyone for the lack of output, especially when 2025 was a solid-to-great year of metal releases. Hopefully, this list will suffice and provide a few killer records that the rest of the crew idiotically withheld.

    I’d be lying if I said listening to music and writing reviews came easily to me this year. Hell, writing in general has been difficult to do, and I do it for a living. But the fun, creative elements of AMG have been lost to me for months, which is sad as hell because I know I have way more curse-word combinations flowing through my veins. Thankfully, the support of this group and my family has been fundamental to getting me back on a path to mental and physical health so I can feel somewhat like a normal person. Thankfully, keeping busy with editing/deleting other writers’ lists1 and putting together my elite one has brought back a touch of spark. While I will always be the grumpy Grier that everyone knows and loves hates, I do appreciate the support from the entire gang—being a part of this monster that AMG built, being belittled by Steel, being filthy with Kenny and Grymm, trolling Dolph, hating on Doom, annoying the Shark, and getting provocative gifts from Ferox—because it’s a surprisingly therapeutic experience. Which is kinda fucked up, now that I think about it…2

    So, let’s raise a glass to this coming year and let’s hope it’s a 3.5/5.0 compared to this 0.5/5.0 one. And enjoy these awesome picks you ignored because some of these idiots colluded for analytics.

    #ish. The Haunted // Songs of Last Resort – This selection surprised even me. Though I fucked up and ran out of time to review The Haunted’s newest opus, Songs of Last Resort, it regularly surfaced on my playlists and, in classic Grier fashion, secured my “ish” selection. If you’re new to a Grier list, I reserve my “ish” pick for those records I can’t put down. Though in most cases, these selections can legitimately be considered my eleventh pick. Regardless, Songs of Last Resort is a welcoming return to form that reminds me a lot of the band’s output during the period of One Kill Wonder and RevolveR. Sure, it helps that One Kill Wonder’s Marco Aro is back in the band, but this album’s flow is similar to those others. The longest track on the record clocks in at four-plus minutes, while the others come and go like a phantom sucker punching each time you arrive at a new landing on a creepy-ass staircase. After being set up perfectly with the addictive opening track, “Warhead,” the short, punchy “Death to the Crown” swings a left hook before the chonky bass-kicking “Bleeding Out” has you belting the chorus at the sky. Then, the whole thing drops into the mid-paced back-to-backers, “Labyrinth of Lies” and “Letters of Last Resort.” Come all The Haunted enthusiasts and let us rejoice.

    #10. Sexmag // Sexorcyzm – SEXXXXXXXMAG!!!!! You all knew this was going to happen. But really, it makes perfect sense when you consider the influences these crazy Poles incorporate into their music. Bands like Bathory, Darkthrone, Slayer, and Mercyful Fate, to name a few. After years of demos and EPs, Sexmag finally released their first full-length under the ever-sexy name, Sexorcyzm. Even sexier are track names like “Inkubus,” “Sex z diabłem,” and “Psalm I – Intronizacja Szatana.” I don’t know what any of them mean, but they either have “sex” in the title or just sound sexy. But, in all seriousness, the band’s wild blend of black, death, and thrash influences makes this one of the funnest records of the year. The skill is impressive, the vocals are outlandishly ugly, and the album’s dynamics bring everything to life in the most pleasing and gross way. If you skipped on this album because you thought Grier was doing one of his assinine trolling fests, you are wrong, and you need to correct your sexiness.

    #9. Vintersorg // Vattenkrafternas spel – While not the band’s best output in a long line of great albums, Vattenkrafternas spel is still one of the best Viking/folk metal records of 2025. Infusing the Vintersorg of old with the new, Vattenkrafternas spel sets out to capture the hearts of its entire fanbase in this meaty, hour-long journey through the band’s signature Viking, folk, and progressive landscapes. The production does wonders for the album when compared to past offerings that are as compressed as hard tack. Be it the blackened beauty of “Efter dis kommer dimma,” incorporating gorgeous, male and female clean vocals, or the folky “Malströmsbrus” with its Vintersorg yodeling and addictiveness, Vattenkrafternas spel pushes and pulls on those strings of yore to bring you something comfortable yet refreshing. That said, no Vintersorg record is complete without the outrageous key atmospheres so prevalent and unique to their sound. Songs like “Ur älv och å” and “Ödsliga salar” fulfill that urge, ensuring erections for this kind of key play remain hard and girthy.

    #8. Bear Mace // Slaves of the Wolf – As many of you know, I am not a big death metal guy. I was at one point, but the predictability of the style, as it became trapped on endless repeat as old masters tried to remain relevant into the 00s, began to turn me off. That’s not uncommon for any other genre that had a heyday at one point in metal’s existence. The acceptance that lovers of the genre might surface and borrow shamelessly from previous groundbreakers has allowed me to enjoy what I once did. Bear Mace is just such a band that, every time I spin one of their releases, I’m transported back in time when Massacre, Bolt Thrower, and the like were fresh to my pubescent self. And this year’s Slaves of the Wolf sees Bear Mace punching it up to a new level and delivering crushing riff after crushing riff. I cannot deny that the nasty, relentless attacks of “Slaves of the Wolf,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and the back-to-back “Prophecy” and “Cancerous Winds” keep me coming back time and again. While all Bear Mace is macy, Slaves of the Wolf stands above the others and delivers big bear slaps. Or something like that.

    #7. Gaahls Wyrd // Braiding the Stories – Regardless of whether you interpret “wyrd” as “weird” or “word,” both can be applied to Gaahls Wyrd’s sophomore outing, Braiding the Stories. Whether Gaahl’s words hit you harder than the band’s weird approach to atmospheres and influences is completely up to you. Be it captivating, moody numbers like the title track or the balls-to-the-walls “Time and Timeless Timeline,” Braiding the Stories has all a Gaahl fan could ever want. From low whispers to Gaahl’s terrifying shrieks, the moods captured on this record are stronger and far superior to anything the band has ever put together. It’s an unsettling disc that fucks around with track lengths, moods, and everything in between. At one point, you are cruising through a nearly nine-minute-long, atmoblack piece before being pummeled to death for three new minutes. Then, you’re chilling in two minutes of an ethereal nightmare before the hammering of drums comes down on your head like that of Mephorash. It’s a bewildering, disorienting experience that is so pleasing it should be illegal. Gaahl’s days atop the mighty Gorgoroth might be over, but Gaahl ain’t going anywhere yet.

    #6. Mors Principium Est // Darkness Invisible – This one might be a surprise to many because Mors Principium Est’s last record, Liberate the Unborn Inhumanity, was not good. This was probably in part because Andy Gillion, the staple of the band since 2011, and the wizard that brought us the impressive guitar work of …And Death Said Live and Dawn of the 5th Era, left the fold. To make matters worse, Gillion dropped one hell of a killer record last year in the form of Exilium. Regardless of whether anyone agrees that Darkness Invisible is a return to form for MPE, it’s indeed far superior to its predecessor, and a record that has been haunting me since its release. Perhaps it’s the mood I’ve been in for the last few months that dragged Darkness Invisible, scratching and screaming, into my year-end list. Or maybe it’s because no matter what MPE releases, I’ll find something to love. For those who skipped it, check out the gorgeous female vocals of “All Life Is Evil” and the heart-wrenching melodeath of tracks like “Of Death” and “Summoning the Dark.”

    #5. In the Woods… // Otra – In the Woods… have been around a long time in a lot of different iterations. Be it the coming and going of founders and bandmates, or the careless attitude of genre and sub-genre fuckery, this Norwegian outfit has worked tirelessly to cement both the lineup and the direction the band wants to be identified as in this new era. While 2022’s Diversum began the exploration of blending styles, this year’s Otra did far more to ensure the concrete begins to settle and cure. Tapping into their wide variation of influences, you can capture everything from Borknagar-esque progressions to the black ‘n’ roll character of Carpathian Forest and the low, doomy patterns of Type O Negative and A Vision Bleak. And, somehow, it all works—each song biting on the ass-end of its successor, forcing the music to flow in a pleasing, yet unlikely recordpede. It’s been a while since I felt that In the Woods… might have something worth getting excited about, but this new direction creates palpitations in my olde, black heart.

    #4. Green Carnation // A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia – Green Carnation has been a literal staple in my life for fuck knows how long. And each record has a place, mood, and time that work—regardless if it’s the wild choirs and orchestrations of Journey to the End of the Night, the one-track Light of Day, Day of Darkness, the goth-rock of A Blessing in Disguise, or the acoustic bliss of The Acoustic Verses. This Norwegian outfit has damn-near tried it all, and it works each time. But 2020’s Leaves of Yesteryear was a goddamn epic, and it’s hard to consider anything would be anywhere as strong. Sadly, A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia is not as strong. Does that make it a bad album? Fuck no. That’s why it’s on my list. Like its predecessor, it’s engulfed in moods and textures that only Green Carnation can do. And with two more parts in sight for what can clearly be described as the beginning of something new, there’s a good chance these gents will be on even more Grier lists.

    #3. Ars Moriendi // Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres – No Grier list is complete without mention of the mighty Ars Moriendi. Though I dropped the ball when it came around for review, that didn’t stop me from spinning this record since its release in June. As with all Ars Moriendi releases, Arsonist continues to push his limits in everything from performances to songwriting and production. And Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is no different. Be it the engulfing atmospheres of the two-part “L’abbé de Monte-à-Regret,” the impressive bass work of the powerful “Trouver la fontaine,” or the heart-wrenching piano and clean vocals of “Puisqu’elle est éternelle,” this new record is a captivating display of progressive black metal prowess. Sprinkled throughout with electronic effects and hypnotizing sound bytes, Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is a full experience that cannot be disconnected or Spotified. To truly understand it, you must get lost in it.

    #2. Abigail Williams // A Void Within Existence – I’ve been an Abigail Williams fan for a long time, but never has one of their albums hit me as hard as A Void Within Existence does. Combining elements of second-wave assaults, atmospheric black metal, and crushing sadness, this new record is perhaps the band’s best. While a couple of songs reach the heights of Song o’ the Year, not a single one is out of place. After the black metal pummeling that is “Life, Disconnected” and “Void Within,” “Talk to Your Sleep” stomps your ass straight into the ground, developing a nice interlude from the norm, and a headbangability that is unique to the band’s songwriting. When the album closes with “No Less than Death,” a clean-vocal performance sends me in a depressive spiral that I still haven’t recovered from. Ken Sorceron and co. have done it again, alternating between peaks and valleys of emotion that disrupt basic brain functions and leave me in an absolute pit of despair.

    #1. Havukruunu // Tavastland – I don’t think there’s much more that I can say about Havukruunu that hasn’t been said before. For years, these fantastic Finns have been scratching that itch for old-school Bathory-core that is almost as good as the real fucking thing. And, for years, they’ve nestled gently into my year-end lists but never quite climbed over other incredible albums at the time. This year, things have changed. Tavastland is not only the best album of the year but arguably Havukruunu’s masterpiece. Incorporating every element of their sound into this near-perfect track list, you’ll experience everything from bludgeoning Bathory-meets-Immortal riffs, feel-good Viking plods, melodic passages, and seamless transitions that make repeat listens oh-so soothing. Not to mention, the tight performances and open production will have you gushing over Humö’s fantastic bass work. It’s a monstrous, lively, and energetic album that’s difficult to put down and never disappoints, regardless of whether you’re in the mood for pillaging unsuspecting villages or sitting on the beach with a daquery.

    Honorable Mentions

    • Lychgate // Precipice – I wish I had given this record more time. Instead, it had to be released in fucking December. Stop doing that! Regardless, this is a weird fucking record with a lot of balls and a lot of aggression that you plebs should listen to.
    • Hazzerd // The 3rd Dimension – OK, hear me out. The 3rd Dimension is one of the best thrash records of the year, and you’re a poser if you disagree. With Death Angel-like vocals and Exodus-meets-Slayer riffage, all wrapped up in some impressive technicality, ya can’t go wrong with Hazzerd’s newest outing.
    • Cradle of Filth // The Screaming of the Valkyries – I can’t deny it, The Screaming of the Valkyries is fucking good. So good that I can’t stop spinning it. With the help of new female vocal support, a new guitarist, and some killer, punchy tunes, this new record is an embedded thorn in my ass that I can’t locate or remove, no matter how I try.
    • Them // Psychedelic Enigma – The story goes on, even when we all thought it was over after the NYC debacle known as Fear City. Looking to milk their characters and lyrical directions to death, Them is back with a new chapter in Psychedelic Enigma. Though it’s not as good as recent releases, it still helps my longing heart continue to beat in hopes of a new King Diamond record.
    • Blood Red Throne // Siltskin – This was yet another release I fooked and never wrote up. If you’re a fan, Siltskin is more than worth it, but don’t get your hopes up if it doesn’t meet all your expectations.

    Disappointments o’ the Year

    • Machine Head – UnatØNed – I dØN’t really knØW what to say abØUt UnatØNed that I haven’t said already. It’s a directiØNless collectiØN ØF “best hits”—that dØN’t hit at all—instead ØF a full-length release. Even if mØSt people have issues with the band’s entire discØG, yØU can’t deny that, at ØNe point, there was passion in Machine Head’s music. NØW, it’s all abØUt thØSe hit pieces that make it ØN year-end lists pulled by iTunes, SpØTify, and yØUr lØCal rØCk radiØ. Which makes me sad because I ØNce held sØMe respect for Flynn, but there are ØNly sØ many disappØIntments ØNe can take befØRe they have nØ chØIce but tØ mØVe ØN.

    Songs o’ the Year

    • Abigail Williams – “Talk to Your Sleep”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • Abigail Williams – “No Less than Death”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • In the Woods… – “Let Me Sing”

    Otra by In The woods…

    • Gaahls Wyrd – “Time and Timeless Timeline”

    Braiding The Stories by Gaahls WYRD

    #2025 #AbigailWilliams #ArsMoriendi #BearMace #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #CradleOfFilth #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2025 #GaahlsWYRD #GreenCarnation #Havukruunu #Hazzerd #InTheWoods #Lists #Lychgate #MachineHead #MorsPrincipiumEst #Sexmag #TheHaunted #Them #Vintersorg
    #abigailwilliams #arsmoriendi #bearmace #blogposts #bloodredthrone #cradleoffilth
  26. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Dr. A.N. Grier

    To anyone who actually found 2025 to be a solid-to-great year, I envy you. For me, 2025 was one of the absolute worst years of my life. And that counts divorce and suicidal years. With many of you, it began with working my ass off to keep my job in these trying times of financial uncertainty—especially with AI rearing its ugly fucking head. Well, that’s before that bubble bursts and causes more issues than it did before. Then, after returning from a NYC work trip, my 19-year-old black devil, King, collapsed from liver failure, resulting in having to put down a feline friend I’ve raised since a kitten and who I had as my companion for nearly half my life. Jump ahead a few months and, out of the fucking blue, my father collapses in the yard, never to regain consciousness again. With months of heartbreak and stress coming down on my heart like a rain shower of titanium dildos, some professionals were convinced I suffered a literal heart attack. After months of tests and medications, it’s clear that age and stress have crept up on me. The result of all this shit led to one of the worst years of productivity in the sacred halls of Angry Metal Guy. So, I apologize to everyone for the lack of output, especially when 2025 was a solid-to-great year of metal releases. Hopefully, this list will suffice and provide a few killer records that the rest of the crew idiotically withheld.

    I’d be lying if I said listening to music and writing reviews came easily to me this year. Hell, writing in general has been difficult to do, and I do it for a living. But the fun, creative elements of AMG have been lost to me for months, which is sad as hell because I know I have way more curse-word combinations flowing through my veins. Thankfully, the support of this group and my family has been fundamental to getting me back on a path to mental and physical health so I can feel somewhat like a normal person. Thankfully, keeping busy with editing/deleting other writers’ lists1 and putting together my elite one has brought back a touch of spark. While I will always be the grumpy Grier that everyone knows and loves hates, I do appreciate the support from the entire gang—being a part of this monster that AMG built, being belittled by Steel, being filthy with Kenny and Grymm, trolling Dolph, hating on Doom, annoying the Shark, and getting provocative gifts from Ferox—because it’s a surprisingly therapeutic experience. Which is kinda fucked up, now that I think about it…2

    So, let’s raise a glass to this coming year and let’s hope it’s a 3.5/5.0 compared to this 0.5/5.0 one. And enjoy these awesome picks you ignored because some of these idiots colluded for analytics.

    #ish. The Haunted // Songs of Last Resort – This selection surprised even me. Though I fucked up and ran out of time to review The Haunted’s newest opus, Songs of Last Resort, it regularly surfaced on my playlists and, in classic Grier fashion, secured my “ish” selection. If you’re new to a Grier list, I reserve my “ish” pick for those records I can’t put down. Though in most cases, these selections can legitimately be considered my eleventh pick. Regardless, Songs of Last Resort is a welcoming return to form that reminds me a lot of the band’s output during the period of One Kill Wonder and RevolveR. Sure, it helps that One Kill Wonder’s Marco Aro is back in the band, but this album’s flow is similar to those others. The longest track on the record clocks in at four-plus minutes, while the others come and go like a phantom sucker punching each time you arrive at a new landing on a creepy-ass staircase. After being set up perfectly with the addictive opening track, “Warhead,” the short, punchy “Death to the Crown” swings a left hook before the chonky bass-kicking “Bleeding Out” has you belting the chorus at the sky. Then, the whole thing drops into the mid-paced back-to-backers, “Labyrinth of Lies” and “Letters of Last Resort.” Come all The Haunted enthusiasts and let us rejoice.

    #10. Sexmag // Sexorcyzm – SEXXXXXXXMAG!!!!! You all knew this was going to happen. But really, it makes perfect sense when you consider the influences these crazy Poles incorporate into their music. Bands like Bathory, Darkthrone, Slayer, and Mercyful Fate, to name a few. After years of demos and EPs, Sexmag finally released their first full-length under the ever-sexy name, Sexorcyzm. Even sexier are track names like “Inkubus,” “Sex z diabłem,” and “Psalm I – Intronizacja Szatana.” I don’t know what any of them mean, but they either have “sex” in the title or just sound sexy. But, in all seriousness, the band’s wild blend of black, death, and thrash influences makes this one of the funnest records of the year. The skill is impressive, the vocals are outlandishly ugly, and the album’s dynamics bring everything to life in the most pleasing and gross way. If you skipped on this album because you thought Grier was doing one of his assinine trolling fests, you are wrong, and you need to correct your sexiness.

    #9. Vintersorg // Vattenkrafternas spel – While not the band’s best output in a long line of great albums, Vattenkrafternas spel is still one of the best Viking/folk metal records of 2025. Infusing the Vintersorg of old with the new, Vattenkrafternas spel sets out to capture the hearts of its entire fanbase in this meaty, hour-long journey through the band’s signature Viking, folk, and progressive landscapes. The production does wonders for the album when compared to past offerings that are as compressed as hard tack. Be it the blackened beauty of “Efter dis kommer dimma,” incorporating gorgeous, male and female clean vocals, or the folky “Malströmsbrus” with its Vintersorg yodeling and addictiveness, Vattenkrafternas spel pushes and pulls on those strings of yore to bring you something comfortable yet refreshing. That said, no Vintersorg record is complete without the outrageous key atmospheres so prevalent and unique to their sound. Songs like “Ur älv och å” and “Ödsliga salar” fulfill that urge, ensuring erections for this kind of key play remain hard and girthy.

    #8. Bear Mace // Slaves of the Wolf – As many of you know, I am not a big death metal guy. I was at one point, but the predictability of the style, as it became trapped on endless repeat as old masters tried to remain relevant into the 00s, began to turn me off. That’s not uncommon for any other genre that had a heyday at one point in metal’s existence. The acceptance that lovers of the genre might surface and borrow shamelessly from previous groundbreakers has allowed me to enjoy what I once did. Bear Mace is just such a band that, every time I spin one of their releases, I’m transported back in time when Massacre, Bolt Thrower, and the like were fresh to my pubescent self. And this year’s Slaves of the Wolf sees Bear Mace punching it up to a new level and delivering crushing riff after crushing riff. I cannot deny that the nasty, relentless attacks of “Slaves of the Wolf,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and the back-to-back “Prophecy” and “Cancerous Winds” keep me coming back time and again. While all Bear Mace is macy, Slaves of the Wolf stands above the others and delivers big bear slaps. Or something like that.

    #7. Gaahls Wyrd // Braiding the Stories – Regardless of whether you interpret “wyrd” as “weird” or “word,” both can be applied to Gaahls Wyrd’s sophomore outing, Braiding the Stories. Whether Gaahl’s words hit you harder than the band’s weird approach to atmospheres and influences is completely up to you. Be it captivating, moody numbers like the title track or the balls-to-the-walls “Time and Timeless Timeline,” Braiding the Stories has all a Gaahl fan could ever want. From low whispers to Gaahl’s terrifying shrieks, the moods captured on this record are stronger and far superior to anything the band has ever put together. It’s an unsettling disc that fucks around with track lengths, moods, and everything in between. At one point, you are cruising through a nearly nine-minute-long, atmoblack piece before being pummeled to death for three new minutes. Then, you’re chilling in two minutes of an ethereal nightmare before the hammering of drums comes down on your head like that of Mephorash. It’s a bewildering, disorienting experience that is so pleasing it should be illegal. Gaahl’s days atop the mighty Gorgoroth might be over, but Gaahl ain’t going anywhere yet.

    #6. Mors Principium Est // Darkness Invisible – This one might be a surprise to many because Mors Principium Est’s last record, Liberate the Unborn Inhumanity, was not good. This was probably in part because Andy Gillion, the staple of the band since 2011, and the wizard that brought us the impressive guitar work of …And Death Said Live and Dawn of the 5th Era, left the fold. To make matters worse, Gillion dropped one hell of a killer record last year in the form of Exilium. Regardless of whether anyone agrees that Darkness Invisible is a return to form for MPE, it’s indeed far superior to its predecessor, and a record that has been haunting me since its release. Perhaps it’s the mood I’ve been in for the last few months that dragged Darkness Invisible, scratching and screaming, into my year-end list. Or maybe it’s because no matter what MPE releases, I’ll find something to love. For those who skipped it, check out the gorgeous female vocals of “All Life Is Evil” and the heart-wrenching melodeath of tracks like “Of Death” and “Summoning the Dark.”

    #5. In the Woods… // Otra – In the Woods… have been around a long time in a lot of different iterations. Be it the coming and going of founders and bandmates, or the careless attitude of genre and sub-genre fuckery, this Norwegian outfit has worked tirelessly to cement both the lineup and the direction the band wants to be identified as in this new era. While 2022’s Diversum began the exploration of blending styles, this year’s Otra did far more to ensure the concrete begins to settle and cure. Tapping into their wide variation of influences, you can capture everything from Borknagar-esque progressions to the black ‘n’ roll character of Carpathian Forest and the low, doomy patterns of Type O Negative and A Vision Bleak. And, somehow, it all works—each song biting on the ass-end of its successor, forcing the music to flow in a pleasing, yet unlikely recordpede. It’s been a while since I felt that In the Woods… might have something worth getting excited about, but this new direction creates palpitations in my olde, black heart.

    #4. Green Carnation // A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia – Green Carnation has been a literal staple in my life for fuck knows how long. And each record has a place, mood, and time that work—regardless if it’s the wild choirs and orchestrations of Journey to the End of the Night, the one-track Light of Day, Day of Darkness, the goth-rock of A Blessing in Disguise, or the acoustic bliss of The Acoustic Verses. This Norwegian outfit has damn-near tried it all, and it works each time. But 2020’s Leaves of Yesteryear was a goddamn epic, and it’s hard to consider anything would be anywhere as strong. Sadly, A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia is not as strong. Does that make it a bad album? Fuck no. That’s why it’s on my list. Like its predecessor, it’s engulfed in moods and textures that only Green Carnation can do. And with two more parts in sight for what can clearly be described as the beginning of something new, there’s a good chance these gents will be on even more Grier lists.

    #3. Ars Moriendi // Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres – No Grier list is complete without mention of the mighty Ars Moriendi. Though I dropped the ball when it came around for review, that didn’t stop me from spinning this record since its release in June. As with all Ars Moriendi releases, Arsonist continues to push his limits in everything from performances to songwriting and production. And Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is no different. Be it the engulfing atmospheres of the two-part “L’abbé de Monte-à-Regret,” the impressive bass work of the powerful “Trouver la fontaine,” or the heart-wrenching piano and clean vocals of “Puisqu’elle est éternelle,” this new record is a captivating display of progressive black metal prowess. Sprinkled throughout with electronic effects and hypnotizing sound bytes, Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is a full experience that cannot be disconnected or Spotified. To truly understand it, you must get lost in it.

    #2. Abigail Williams // A Void Within Existence – I’ve been an Abigail Williams fan for a long time, but never has one of their albums hit me as hard as A Void Within Existence does. Combining elements of second-wave assaults, atmospheric black metal, and crushing sadness, this new record is perhaps the band’s best. While a couple of songs reach the heights of Song o’ the Year, not a single one is out of place. After the black metal pummeling that is “Life, Disconnected” and “Void Within,” “Talk to Your Sleep” stomps your ass straight into the ground, developing a nice interlude from the norm, and a headbangability that is unique to the band’s songwriting. When the album closes with “No Less than Death,” a clean-vocal performance sends me in a depressive spiral that I still haven’t recovered from. Ken Sorceron and co. have done it again, alternating between peaks and valleys of emotion that disrupt basic brain functions and leave me in an absolute pit of despair.

    #1. Havukruunu // Tavastland – I don’t think there’s much more that I can say about Havukruunu that hasn’t been said before. For years, these fantastic Finns have been scratching that itch for old-school Bathory-core that is almost as good as the real fucking thing. And, for years, they’ve nestled gently into my year-end lists but never quite climbed over other incredible albums at the time. This year, things have changed. Tavastland is not only the best album of the year but arguably Havukruunu’s masterpiece. Incorporating every element of their sound into this near-perfect track list, you’ll experience everything from bludgeoning Bathory-meets-Immortal riffs, feel-good Viking plods, melodic passages, and seamless transitions that make repeat listens oh-so soothing. Not to mention, the tight performances and open production will have you gushing over Humö’s fantastic bass work. It’s a monstrous, lively, and energetic album that’s difficult to put down and never disappoints, regardless of whether you’re in the mood for pillaging unsuspecting villages or sitting on the beach with a daquery.

    Honorable Mentions

    • Lychgate // Precipice – I wish I had given this record more time. Instead, it had to be released in fucking December. Stop doing that! Regardless, this is a weird fucking record with a lot of balls and a lot of aggression that you plebs should listen to.
    • Hazzerd // The 3rd Dimension – OK, hear me out. The 3rd Dimension is one of the best thrash records of the year, and you’re a poser if you disagree. With Death Angel-like vocals and Exodus-meets-Slayer riffage, all wrapped up in some impressive technicality, ya can’t go wrong with Hazzerd’s newest outing.
    • Cradle of Filth // The Screaming of the Valkyries – I can’t deny it, The Screaming of the Valkyries is fucking good. So good that I can’t stop spinning it. With the help of new female vocal support, a new guitarist, and some killer, punchy tunes, this new record is an embedded thorn in my ass that I can’t locate or remove, no matter how I try.
    • Them // Psychedelic Enigma – The story goes on, even when we all thought it was over after the NYC debacle known as Fear City. Looking to milk their characters and lyrical directions to death, Them is back with a new chapter in Psychedelic Enigma. Though it’s not as good as recent releases, it still helps my longing heart continue to beat in hopes of a new King Diamond record.
    • Blood Red Throne // Siltskin – This was yet another release I fooked and never wrote up. If you’re a fan, Siltskin is more than worth it, but don’t get your hopes up if it doesn’t meet all your expectations.

    Disappointments o’ the Year

    • Machine Head – UnatØNed – I dØN’t really knØW what to say abØUt UnatØNed that I haven’t said already. It’s a directiØNless collectiØN ØF “best hits”—that dØN’t hit at all—instead ØF a full-length release. Even if mØSt people have issues with the band’s entire discØG, yØU can’t deny that, at ØNe point, there was passion in Machine Head’s music. NØW, it’s all abØUt thØSe hit pieces that make it ØN year-end lists pulled by iTunes, SpØTify, and yØUr lØCal rØCk radiØ. Which makes me sad because I ØNce held sØMe respect for Flynn, but there are ØNly sØ many disappØIntments ØNe can take befØRe they have nØ chØIce but tØ mØVe ØN.

    Songs o’ the Year

    • Abigail Williams – “Talk to Your Sleep”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • Abigail Williams – “No Less than Death”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • In the Woods… – “Let Me Sing”

    Otra by In The woods…

    • Gaahls Wyrd – “Time and Timeless Timeline”

    Braiding The Stories by Gaahls WYRD

    #2025 #AbigailWilliams #ArsMoriendi #BearMace #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #CradleOfFilth #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2025 #GaahlsWYRD #GreenCarnation #Havukruunu #Hazzerd #InTheWoods #Lists #Lychgate #MachineHead #MorsPrincipiumEst #Sexmag #TheHaunted #Them #Vintersorg
    #abigailwilliams #arsmoriendi #bearmace #blogposts #bloodredthrone #cradleoffilth
  27. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Dr. A.N. Grier

    To anyone who actually found 2025 to be a solid-to-great year, I envy you. For me, 2025 was one of the absolute worst years of my life. And that counts divorce and suicidal years. With many of you, it began with working my ass off to keep my job in these trying times of financial uncertainty—especially with AI rearing its ugly fucking head. Well, that’s before that bubble bursts and causes more issues than it did before. Then, after returning from a NYC work trip, my 19-year-old black devil, King, collapsed from liver failure, resulting in having to put down a feline friend I’ve raised since a kitten and who I had as my companion for nearly half my life. Jump ahead a few months and, out of the fucking blue, my father collapses in the yard, never to regain consciousness again. With months of heartbreak and stress coming down on my heart like a rain shower of titanium dildos, some professionals were convinced I suffered a literal heart attack. After months of tests and medications, it’s clear that age and stress have crept up on me. The result of all this shit led to one of the worst years of productivity in the sacred halls of Angry Metal Guy. So, I apologize to everyone for the lack of output, especially when 2025 was a solid-to-great year of metal releases. Hopefully, this list will suffice and provide a few killer records that the rest of the crew idiotically withheld.

    I’d be lying if I said listening to music and writing reviews came easily to me this year. Hell, writing in general has been difficult to do, and I do it for a living. But the fun, creative elements of AMG have been lost to me for months, which is sad as hell because I know I have way more curse-word combinations flowing through my veins. Thankfully, the support of this group and my family has been fundamental to getting me back on a path to mental and physical health so I can feel somewhat like a normal person. Thankfully, keeping busy with editing/deleting other writers’ lists1 and putting together my elite one has brought back a touch of spark. While I will always be the grumpy Grier that everyone knows and loves hates, I do appreciate the support from the entire gang—being a part of this monster that AMG built, being belittled by Steel, being filthy with Kenny and Grymm, trolling Dolph, hating on Doom, annoying the Shark, and getting provocative gifts from Ferox—because it’s a surprisingly therapeutic experience. Which is kinda fucked up, now that I think about it…2

    So, let’s raise a glass to this coming year and let’s hope it’s a 3.5/5.0 compared to this 0.5/5.0 one. And enjoy these awesome picks you ignored because some of these idiots colluded for analytics.

    #ish. The Haunted // Songs of Last Resort – This selection surprised even me. Though I fucked up and ran out of time to review The Haunted’s newest opus, Songs of Last Resort, it regularly surfaced on my playlists and, in classic Grier fashion, secured my “ish” selection. If you’re new to a Grier list, I reserve my “ish” pick for those records I can’t put down. Though in most cases, these selections can legitimately be considered my eleventh pick. Regardless, Songs of Last Resort is a welcoming return to form that reminds me a lot of the band’s output during the period of One Kill Wonder and RevolveR. Sure, it helps that One Kill Wonder’s Marco Aro is back in the band, but this album’s flow is similar to those others. The longest track on the record clocks in at four-plus minutes, while the others come and go like a phantom sucker punching each time you arrive at a new landing on a creepy-ass staircase. After being set up perfectly with the addictive opening track, “Warhead,” the short, punchy “Death to the Crown” swings a left hook before the chonky bass-kicking “Bleeding Out” has you belting the chorus at the sky. Then, the whole thing drops into the mid-paced back-to-backers, “Labyrinth of Lies” and “Letters of Last Resort.” Come all The Haunted enthusiasts and let us rejoice.

    #10. Sexmag // Sexorcyzm – SEXXXXXXXMAG!!!!! You all knew this was going to happen. But really, it makes perfect sense when you consider the influences these crazy Poles incorporate into their music. Bands like Bathory, Darkthrone, Slayer, and Mercyful Fate, to name a few. After years of demos and EPs, Sexmag finally released their first full-length under the ever-sexy name, Sexorcyzm. Even sexier are track names like “Inkubus,” “Sex z diabłem,” and “Psalm I – Intronizacja Szatana.” I don’t know what any of them mean, but they either have “sex” in the title or just sound sexy. But, in all seriousness, the band’s wild blend of black, death, and thrash influences makes this one of the funnest records of the year. The skill is impressive, the vocals are outlandishly ugly, and the album’s dynamics bring everything to life in the most pleasing and gross way. If you skipped on this album because you thought Grier was doing one of his assinine trolling fests, you are wrong, and you need to correct your sexiness.

    #9. Vintersorg // Vattenkrafternas spel – While not the band’s best output in a long line of great albums, Vattenkrafternas spel is still one of the best Viking/folk metal records of 2025. Infusing the Vintersorg of old with the new, Vattenkrafternas spel sets out to capture the hearts of its entire fanbase in this meaty, hour-long journey through the band’s signature Viking, folk, and progressive landscapes. The production does wonders for the album when compared to past offerings that are as compressed as hard tack. Be it the blackened beauty of “Efter dis kommer dimma,” incorporating gorgeous, male and female clean vocals, or the folky “Malströmsbrus” with its Vintersorg yodeling and addictiveness, Vattenkrafternas spel pushes and pulls on those strings of yore to bring you something comfortable yet refreshing. That said, no Vintersorg record is complete without the outrageous key atmospheres so prevalent and unique to their sound. Songs like “Ur älv och å” and “Ödsliga salar” fulfill that urge, ensuring erections for this kind of key play remain hard and girthy.

    #8. Bear Mace // Slaves of the Wolf – As many of you know, I am not a big death metal guy. I was at one point, but the predictability of the style, as it became trapped on endless repeat as old masters tried to remain relevant into the 00s, began to turn me off. That’s not uncommon for any other genre that had a heyday at one point in metal’s existence. The acceptance that lovers of the genre might surface and borrow shamelessly from previous groundbreakers has allowed me to enjoy what I once did. Bear Mace is just such a band that, every time I spin one of their releases, I’m transported back in time when Massacre, Bolt Thrower, and the like were fresh to my pubescent self. And this year’s Slaves of the Wolf sees Bear Mace punching it up to a new level and delivering crushing riff after crushing riff. I cannot deny that the nasty, relentless attacks of “Slaves of the Wolf,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and the back-to-back “Prophecy” and “Cancerous Winds” keep me coming back time and again. While all Bear Mace is macy, Slaves of the Wolf stands above the others and delivers big bear slaps. Or something like that.

    #7. Gaahls Wyrd // Braiding the Stories – Regardless of whether you interpret “wyrd” as “weird” or “word,” both can be applied to Gaahls Wyrd’s sophomore outing, Braiding the Stories. Whether Gaahl’s words hit you harder than the band’s weird approach to atmospheres and influences is completely up to you. Be it captivating, moody numbers like the title track or the balls-to-the-walls “Time and Timeless Timeline,” Braiding the Stories has all a Gaahl fan could ever want. From low whispers to Gaahl’s terrifying shrieks, the moods captured on this record are stronger and far superior to anything the band has ever put together. It’s an unsettling disc that fucks around with track lengths, moods, and everything in between. At one point, you are cruising through a nearly nine-minute-long, atmoblack piece before being pummeled to death for three new minutes. Then, you’re chilling in two minutes of an ethereal nightmare before the hammering of drums comes down on your head like that of Mephorash. It’s a bewildering, disorienting experience that is so pleasing it should be illegal. Gaahl’s days atop the mighty Gorgoroth might be over, but Gaahl ain’t going anywhere yet.

    #6. Mors Principium Est // Darkness Invisible – This one might be a surprise to many because Mors Principium Est’s last record, Liberate the Unborn Inhumanity, was not good. This was probably in part because Andy Gillion, the staple of the band since 2011, and the wizard that brought us the impressive guitar work of …And Death Said Live and Dawn of the 5th Era, left the fold. To make matters worse, Gillion dropped one hell of a killer record last year in the form of Exilium. Regardless of whether anyone agrees that Darkness Invisible is a return to form for MPE, it’s indeed far superior to its predecessor, and a record that has been haunting me since its release. Perhaps it’s the mood I’ve been in for the last few months that dragged Darkness Invisible, scratching and screaming, into my year-end list. Or maybe it’s because no matter what MPE releases, I’ll find something to love. For those who skipped it, check out the gorgeous female vocals of “All Life Is Evil” and the heart-wrenching melodeath of tracks like “Of Death” and “Summoning the Dark.”

    #5. In the Woods… // Otra – In the Woods… have been around a long time in a lot of different iterations. Be it the coming and going of founders and bandmates, or the careless attitude of genre and sub-genre fuckery, this Norwegian outfit has worked tirelessly to cement both the lineup and the direction the band wants to be identified as in this new era. While 2022’s Diversum began the exploration of blending styles, this year’s Otra did far more to ensure the concrete begins to settle and cure. Tapping into their wide variation of influences, you can capture everything from Borknagar-esque progressions to the black ‘n’ roll character of Carpathian Forest and the low, doomy patterns of Type O Negative and A Vision Bleak. And, somehow, it all works—each song biting on the ass-end of its successor, forcing the music to flow in a pleasing, yet unlikely recordpede. It’s been a while since I felt that In the Woods… might have something worth getting excited about, but this new direction creates palpitations in my olde, black heart.

    #4. Green Carnation // A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia – Green Carnation has been a literal staple in my life for fuck knows how long. And each record has a place, mood, and time that work—regardless if it’s the wild choirs and orchestrations of Journey to the End of the Night, the one-track Light of Day, Day of Darkness, the goth-rock of A Blessing in Disguise, or the acoustic bliss of The Acoustic Verses. This Norwegian outfit has damn-near tried it all, and it works each time. But 2020’s Leaves of Yesteryear was a goddamn epic, and it’s hard to consider anything would be anywhere as strong. Sadly, A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia is not as strong. Does that make it a bad album? Fuck no. That’s why it’s on my list. Like its predecessor, it’s engulfed in moods and textures that only Green Carnation can do. And with two more parts in sight for what can clearly be described as the beginning of something new, there’s a good chance these gents will be on even more Grier lists.

    #3. Ars Moriendi // Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres – No Grier list is complete without mention of the mighty Ars Moriendi. Though I dropped the ball when it came around for review, that didn’t stop me from spinning this record since its release in June. As with all Ars Moriendi releases, Arsonist continues to push his limits in everything from performances to songwriting and production. And Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is no different. Be it the engulfing atmospheres of the two-part “L’abbé de Monte-à-Regret,” the impressive bass work of the powerful “Trouver la fontaine,” or the heart-wrenching piano and clean vocals of “Puisqu’elle est éternelle,” this new record is a captivating display of progressive black metal prowess. Sprinkled throughout with electronic effects and hypnotizing sound bytes, Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is a full experience that cannot be disconnected or Spotified. To truly understand it, you must get lost in it.

    #2. Abigail Williams // A Void Within Existence – I’ve been an Abigail Williams fan for a long time, but never has one of their albums hit me as hard as A Void Within Existence does. Combining elements of second-wave assaults, atmospheric black metal, and crushing sadness, this new record is perhaps the band’s best. While a couple of songs reach the heights of Song o’ the Year, not a single one is out of place. After the black metal pummeling that is “Life, Disconnected” and “Void Within,” “Talk to Your Sleep” stomps your ass straight into the ground, developing a nice interlude from the norm, and a headbangability that is unique to the band’s songwriting. When the album closes with “No Less than Death,” a clean-vocal performance sends me in a depressive spiral that I still haven’t recovered from. Ken Sorceron and co. have done it again, alternating between peaks and valleys of emotion that disrupt basic brain functions and leave me in an absolute pit of despair.

    #1. Havukruunu // Tavastland – I don’t think there’s much more that I can say about Havukruunu that hasn’t been said before. For years, these fantastic Finns have been scratching that itch for old-school Bathory-core that is almost as good as the real fucking thing. And, for years, they’ve nestled gently into my year-end lists but never quite climbed over other incredible albums at the time. This year, things have changed. Tavastland is not only the best album of the year but arguably Havukruunu’s masterpiece. Incorporating every element of their sound into this near-perfect track list, you’ll experience everything from bludgeoning Bathory-meets-Immortal riffs, feel-good Viking plods, melodic passages, and seamless transitions that make repeat listens oh-so soothing. Not to mention, the tight performances and open production will have you gushing over Humö’s fantastic bass work. It’s a monstrous, lively, and energetic album that’s difficult to put down and never disappoints, regardless of whether you’re in the mood for pillaging unsuspecting villages or sitting on the beach with a daquery.

    Honorable Mentions

    • Lychgate // Precipice – I wish I had given this record more time. Instead, it had to be released in fucking December. Stop doing that! Regardless, this is a weird fucking record with a lot of balls and a lot of aggression that you plebs should listen to.
    • Hazzerd // The 3rd Dimension – OK, hear me out. The 3rd Dimension is one of the best thrash records of the year, and you’re a poser if you disagree. With Death Angel-like vocals and Exodus-meets-Slayer riffage, all wrapped up in some impressive technicality, ya can’t go wrong with Hazzerd’s newest outing.
    • Cradle of Filth // The Screaming of the Valkyries – I can’t deny it, The Screaming of the Valkyries is fucking good. So good that I can’t stop spinning it. With the help of new female vocal support, a new guitarist, and some killer, punchy tunes, this new record is an embedded thorn in my ass that I can’t locate or remove, no matter how I try.
    • Them // Psychedelic Enigma – The story goes on, even when we all thought it was over after the NYC debacle known as Fear City. Looking to milk their characters and lyrical directions to death, Them is back with a new chapter in Psychedelic Enigma. Though it’s not as good as recent releases, it still helps my longing heart continue to beat in hopes of a new King Diamond record.
    • Blood Red Throne // Siltskin – This was yet another release I fooked and never wrote up. If you’re a fan, Siltskin is more than worth it, but don’t get your hopes up if it doesn’t meet all your expectations.

    Disappointments o’ the Year

    • Machine Head – UnatØNed – I dØN’t really knØW what to say abØUt UnatØNed that I haven’t said already. It’s a directiØNless collectiØN ØF “best hits”—that dØN’t hit at all—instead ØF a full-length release. Even if mØSt people have issues with the band’s entire discØG, yØU can’t deny that, at ØNe point, there was passion in Machine Head’s music. NØW, it’s all abØUt thØSe hit pieces that make it ØN year-end lists pulled by iTunes, SpØTify, and yØUr lØCal rØCk radiØ. Which makes me sad because I ØNce held sØMe respect for Flynn, but there are ØNly sØ many disappØIntments ØNe can take befØRe they have nØ chØIce but tØ mØVe ØN.

    Songs o’ the Year

    • Abigail Williams – “Talk to Your Sleep”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • Abigail Williams – “No Less than Death”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • In the Woods… – “Let Me Sing”

    Otra by In The woods…

    • Gaahls Wyrd – “Time and Timeless Timeline”

    Braiding The Stories by Gaahls WYRD

    #2025 #AbigailWilliams #ArsMoriendi #BearMace #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #CradleOfFilth #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2025 #GaahlsWYRD #GreenCarnation #Havukruunu #Hazzerd #InTheWoods #Lists #Lychgate #MachineHead #MorsPrincipiumEst #Sexmag #TheHaunted #Them #Vintersorg
    #abigailwilliams #arsmoriendi #bearmace #blogposts #bloodredthrone #cradleoffilth
  28. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Dr. A.N. Grier

    To anyone who actually found 2025 to be a solid-to-great year, I envy you. For me, 2025 was one of the absolute worst years of my life. And that counts divorce and suicidal years. With many of you, it began with working my ass off to keep my job in these trying times of financial uncertainty—especially with AI rearing its ugly fucking head. Well, that’s before that bubble bursts and causes more issues than it did before. Then, after returning from a NYC work trip, my 19-year-old black devil, King, collapsed from liver failure, resulting in having to put down a feline friend I’ve raised since a kitten and who I had as my companion for nearly half my life. Jump ahead a few months and, out of the fucking blue, my father collapses in the yard, never to regain consciousness again. With months of heartbreak and stress coming down on my heart like a rain shower of titanium dildos, some professionals were convinced I suffered a literal heart attack. After months of tests and medications, it’s clear that age and stress have crept up on me. The result of all this shit led to one of the worst years of productivity in the sacred halls of Angry Metal Guy. So, I apologize to everyone for the lack of output, especially when 2025 was a solid-to-great year of metal releases. Hopefully, this list will suffice and provide a few killer records that the rest of the crew idiotically withheld.

    I’d be lying if I said listening to music and writing reviews came easily to me this year. Hell, writing in general has been difficult to do, and I do it for a living. But the fun, creative elements of AMG have been lost to me for months, which is sad as hell because I know I have way more curse-word combinations flowing through my veins. Thankfully, the support of this group and my family has been fundamental to getting me back on a path to mental and physical health so I can feel somewhat like a normal person. Thankfully, keeping busy with editing/deleting other writers’ lists1 and putting together my elite one has brought back a touch of spark. While I will always be the grumpy Grier that everyone knows and loves hates, I do appreciate the support from the entire gang—being a part of this monster that AMG built, being belittled by Steel, being filthy with Kenny and Grymm, trolling Dolph, hating on Doom, annoying the Shark, and getting provocative gifts from Ferox—because it’s a surprisingly therapeutic experience. Which is kinda fucked up, now that I think about it…2

    So, let’s raise a glass to this coming year and let’s hope it’s a 3.5/5.0 compared to this 0.5/5.0 one. And enjoy these awesome picks you ignored because some of these idiots colluded for analytics.

    #ish. The Haunted // Songs of Last Resort – This selection surprised even me. Though I fucked up and ran out of time to review The Haunted’s newest opus, Songs of Last Resort, it regularly surfaced on my playlists and, in classic Grier fashion, secured my “ish” selection. If you’re new to a Grier list, I reserve my “ish” pick for those records I can’t put down. Though in most cases, these selections can legitimately be considered my eleventh pick. Regardless, Songs of Last Resort is a welcoming return to form that reminds me a lot of the band’s output during the period of One Kill Wonder and RevolveR. Sure, it helps that One Kill Wonder’s Marco Aro is back in the band, but this album’s flow is similar to those others. The longest track on the record clocks in at four-plus minutes, while the others come and go like a phantom sucker punching each time you arrive at a new landing on a creepy-ass staircase. After being set up perfectly with the addictive opening track, “Warhead,” the short, punchy “Death to the Crown” swings a left hook before the chonky bass-kicking “Bleeding Out” has you belting the chorus at the sky. Then, the whole thing drops into the mid-paced back-to-backers, “Labyrinth of Lies” and “Letters of Last Resort.” Come all The Haunted enthusiasts and let us rejoice.

    #10. Sexmag // Sexorcyzm – SEXXXXXXXMAG!!!!! You all knew this was going to happen. But really, it makes perfect sense when you consider the influences these crazy Poles incorporate into their music. Bands like Bathory, Darkthrone, Slayer, and Mercyful Fate, to name a few. After years of demos and EPs, Sexmag finally released their first full-length under the ever-sexy name, Sexorcyzm. Even sexier are track names like “Inkubus,” “Sex z diabłem,” and “Psalm I – Intronizacja Szatana.” I don’t know what any of them mean, but they either have “sex” in the title or just sound sexy. But, in all seriousness, the band’s wild blend of black, death, and thrash influences makes this one of the funnest records of the year. The skill is impressive, the vocals are outlandishly ugly, and the album’s dynamics bring everything to life in the most pleasing and gross way. If you skipped on this album because you thought Grier was doing one of his assinine trolling fests, you are wrong, and you need to correct your sexiness.

    #9. Vintersorg // Vattenkrafternas spel – While not the band’s best output in a long line of great albums, Vattenkrafternas spel is still one of the best Viking/folk metal records of 2025. Infusing the Vintersorg of old with the new, Vattenkrafternas spel sets out to capture the hearts of its entire fanbase in this meaty, hour-long journey through the band’s signature Viking, folk, and progressive landscapes. The production does wonders for the album when compared to past offerings that are as compressed as hard tack. Be it the blackened beauty of “Efter dis kommer dimma,” incorporating gorgeous, male and female clean vocals, or the folky “Malströmsbrus” with its Vintersorg yodeling and addictiveness, Vattenkrafternas spel pushes and pulls on those strings of yore to bring you something comfortable yet refreshing. That said, no Vintersorg record is complete without the outrageous key atmospheres so prevalent and unique to their sound. Songs like “Ur älv och å” and “Ödsliga salar” fulfill that urge, ensuring erections for this kind of key play remain hard and girthy.

    #8. Bear Mace // Slaves of the Wolf – As many of you know, I am not a big death metal guy. I was at one point, but the predictability of the style, as it became trapped on endless repeat as old masters tried to remain relevant into the 00s, began to turn me off. That’s not uncommon for any other genre that had a heyday at one point in metal’s existence. The acceptance that lovers of the genre might surface and borrow shamelessly from previous groundbreakers has allowed me to enjoy what I once did. Bear Mace is just such a band that, every time I spin one of their releases, I’m transported back in time when Massacre, Bolt Thrower, and the like were fresh to my pubescent self. And this year’s Slaves of the Wolf sees Bear Mace punching it up to a new level and delivering crushing riff after crushing riff. I cannot deny that the nasty, relentless attacks of “Slaves of the Wolf,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and the back-to-back “Prophecy” and “Cancerous Winds” keep me coming back time and again. While all Bear Mace is macy, Slaves of the Wolf stands above the others and delivers big bear slaps. Or something like that.

    #7. Gaahls Wyrd // Braiding the Stories – Regardless of whether you interpret “wyrd” as “weird” or “word,” both can be applied to Gaahls Wyrd’s sophomore outing, Braiding the Stories. Whether Gaahl’s words hit you harder than the band’s weird approach to atmospheres and influences is completely up to you. Be it captivating, moody numbers like the title track or the balls-to-the-walls “Time and Timeless Timeline,” Braiding the Stories has all a Gaahl fan could ever want. From low whispers to Gaahl’s terrifying shrieks, the moods captured on this record are stronger and far superior to anything the band has ever put together. It’s an unsettling disc that fucks around with track lengths, moods, and everything in between. At one point, you are cruising through a nearly nine-minute-long, atmoblack piece before being pummeled to death for three new minutes. Then, you’re chilling in two minutes of an ethereal nightmare before the hammering of drums comes down on your head like that of Mephorash. It’s a bewildering, disorienting experience that is so pleasing it should be illegal. Gaahl’s days atop the mighty Gorgoroth might be over, but Gaahl ain’t going anywhere yet.

    #6. Mors Principium Est // Darkness Invisible – This one might be a surprise to many because Mors Principium Est’s last record, Liberate the Unborn Inhumanity, was not good. This was probably in part because Andy Gillion, the staple of the band since 2011, and the wizard that brought us the impressive guitar work of …And Death Said Live and Dawn of the 5th Era, left the fold. To make matters worse, Gillion dropped one hell of a killer record last year in the form of Exilium. Regardless of whether anyone agrees that Darkness Invisible is a return to form for MPE, it’s indeed far superior to its predecessor, and a record that has been haunting me since its release. Perhaps it’s the mood I’ve been in for the last few months that dragged Darkness Invisible, scratching and screaming, into my year-end list. Or maybe it’s because no matter what MPE releases, I’ll find something to love. For those who skipped it, check out the gorgeous female vocals of “All Life Is Evil” and the heart-wrenching melodeath of tracks like “Of Death” and “Summoning the Dark.”

    #5. In the Woods… // Otra – In the Woods… have been around a long time in a lot of different iterations. Be it the coming and going of founders and bandmates, or the careless attitude of genre and sub-genre fuckery, this Norwegian outfit has worked tirelessly to cement both the lineup and the direction the band wants to be identified as in this new era. While 2022’s Diversum began the exploration of blending styles, this year’s Otra did far more to ensure the concrete begins to settle and cure. Tapping into their wide variation of influences, you can capture everything from Borknagar-esque progressions to the black ‘n’ roll character of Carpathian Forest and the low, doomy patterns of Type O Negative and A Vision Bleak. And, somehow, it all works—each song biting on the ass-end of its successor, forcing the music to flow in a pleasing, yet unlikely recordpede. It’s been a while since I felt that In the Woods… might have something worth getting excited about, but this new direction creates palpitations in my olde, black heart.

    #4. Green Carnation // A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia – Green Carnation has been a literal staple in my life for fuck knows how long. And each record has a place, mood, and time that work—regardless if it’s the wild choirs and orchestrations of Journey to the End of the Night, the one-track Light of Day, Day of Darkness, the goth-rock of A Blessing in Disguise, or the acoustic bliss of The Acoustic Verses. This Norwegian outfit has damn-near tried it all, and it works each time. But 2020’s Leaves of Yesteryear was a goddamn epic, and it’s hard to consider anything would be anywhere as strong. Sadly, A Dark Poem, Part I: The Shores of Melancholia is not as strong. Does that make it a bad album? Fuck no. That’s why it’s on my list. Like its predecessor, it’s engulfed in moods and textures that only Green Carnation can do. And with two more parts in sight for what can clearly be described as the beginning of something new, there’s a good chance these gents will be on even more Grier lists.

    #3. Ars Moriendi // Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres – No Grier list is complete without mention of the mighty Ars Moriendi. Though I dropped the ball when it came around for review, that didn’t stop me from spinning this record since its release in June. As with all Ars Moriendi releases, Arsonist continues to push his limits in everything from performances to songwriting and production. And Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is no different. Be it the engulfing atmospheres of the two-part “L’abbé de Monte-à-Regret,” the impressive bass work of the powerful “Trouver la fontaine,” or the heart-wrenching piano and clean vocals of “Puisqu’elle est éternelle,” this new record is a captivating display of progressive black metal prowess. Sprinkled throughout with electronic effects and hypnotizing sound bytes, Leur esprit marche dans les ténèbres is a full experience that cannot be disconnected or Spotified. To truly understand it, you must get lost in it.

    #2. Abigail Williams // A Void Within Existence – I’ve been an Abigail Williams fan for a long time, but never has one of their albums hit me as hard as A Void Within Existence does. Combining elements of second-wave assaults, atmospheric black metal, and crushing sadness, this new record is perhaps the band’s best. While a couple of songs reach the heights of Song o’ the Year, not a single one is out of place. After the black metal pummeling that is “Life, Disconnected” and “Void Within,” “Talk to Your Sleep” stomps your ass straight into the ground, developing a nice interlude from the norm, and a headbangability that is unique to the band’s songwriting. When the album closes with “No Less than Death,” a clean-vocal performance sends me in a depressive spiral that I still haven’t recovered from. Ken Sorceron and co. have done it again, alternating between peaks and valleys of emotion that disrupt basic brain functions and leave me in an absolute pit of despair.

    #1. Havukruunu // Tavastland – I don’t think there’s much more that I can say about Havukruunu that hasn’t been said before. For years, these fantastic Finns have been scratching that itch for old-school Bathory-core that is almost as good as the real fucking thing. And, for years, they’ve nestled gently into my year-end lists but never quite climbed over other incredible albums at the time. This year, things have changed. Tavastland is not only the best album of the year but arguably Havukruunu’s masterpiece. Incorporating every element of their sound into this near-perfect track list, you’ll experience everything from bludgeoning Bathory-meets-Immortal riffs, feel-good Viking plods, melodic passages, and seamless transitions that make repeat listens oh-so soothing. Not to mention, the tight performances and open production will have you gushing over Humö’s fantastic bass work. It’s a monstrous, lively, and energetic album that’s difficult to put down and never disappoints, regardless of whether you’re in the mood for pillaging unsuspecting villages or sitting on the beach with a daquery.

    Honorable Mentions

    • Lychgate // Precipice – I wish I had given this record more time. Instead, it had to be released in fucking December. Stop doing that! Regardless, this is a weird fucking record with a lot of balls and a lot of aggression that you plebs should listen to.
    • Hazzerd // The 3rd Dimension – OK, hear me out. The 3rd Dimension is one of the best thrash records of the year, and you’re a poser if you disagree. With Death Angel-like vocals and Exodus-meets-Slayer riffage, all wrapped up in some impressive technicality, ya can’t go wrong with Hazzerd’s newest outing.
    • Cradle of Filth // The Screaming of the Valkyries – I can’t deny it, The Screaming of the Valkyries is fucking good. So good that I can’t stop spinning it. With the help of new female vocal support, a new guitarist, and some killer, punchy tunes, this new record is an embedded thorn in my ass that I can’t locate or remove, no matter how I try.
    • Them // Psychedelic Enigma – The story goes on, even when we all thought it was over after the NYC debacle known as Fear City. Looking to milk their characters and lyrical directions to death, Them is back with a new chapter in Psychedelic Enigma. Though it’s not as good as recent releases, it still helps my longing heart continue to beat in hopes of a new King Diamond record.
    • Blood Red Throne // Siltskin – This was yet another release I fooked and never wrote up. If you’re a fan, Siltskin is more than worth it, but don’t get your hopes up if it doesn’t meet all your expectations.

    Disappointments o’ the Year

    • Machine Head – UnatØNed – I dØN’t really knØW what to say abØUt UnatØNed that I haven’t said already. It’s a directiØNless collectiØN ØF “best hits”—that dØN’t hit at all—instead ØF a full-length release. Even if mØSt people have issues with the band’s entire discØG, yØU can’t deny that, at ØNe point, there was passion in Machine Head’s music. NØW, it’s all abØUt thØSe hit pieces that make it ØN year-end lists pulled by iTunes, SpØTify, and yØUr lØCal rØCk radiØ. Which makes me sad because I ØNce held sØMe respect for Flynn, but there are ØNly sØ many disappØIntments ØNe can take befØRe they have nØ chØIce but tØ mØVe ØN.

    Songs o’ the Year

    • Abigail Williams – “Talk to Your Sleep”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • Abigail Williams – “No Less than Death”

    A Void Within Existence by Abigail Williams

    • In the Woods… – “Let Me Sing”

    Otra by In The woods…

    • Gaahls Wyrd – “Time and Timeless Timeline”

    Braiding The Stories by Gaahls WYRD

    #2025 #AbigailWilliams #ArsMoriendi #BearMace #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #CradleOfFilth #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2025 #GaahlsWYRD #GreenCarnation #Havukruunu #Hazzerd #InTheWoods #Lists #Lychgate #MachineHead #MorsPrincipiumEst #Sexmag #TheHaunted #Them #Vintersorg
    #abigailwilliams #arsmoriendi #bearmace #blogposts #bloodredthrone #cradleoffilth
  29. Humanist+Humorist @[email protected] ·

    Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage

    Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.

    I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.

    (I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)

    La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:

    This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”

    Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.

    Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.

    Chapter 4:

    Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.

    In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.

    [Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]

    Chapters 5-6:

    Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.

    The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.

    (Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)

    The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”

    Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.

    Chapters 7-9:

    Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.

    Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”

    Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.

    Oh, one more thing!

    This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).

    I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.

    The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.

    …And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.

    Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?

    (So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)

    [Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]

    Chapters 10-11:

    Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.

    [Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]

    Stray daemon details that caught my eye:

    • The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
    • Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
    • Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah

    Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.

    [Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]

    Chapters 12-13:

    Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?

    [Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]

    Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.

    Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”

    Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.

    Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.

    The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.

    Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.

    End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”

    So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.

    Chapters 14-15:

    Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)

    Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.

    Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.

    (Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)

    Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.

    Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…

    Chapter 16:

    Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)

    The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.

    Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”

    Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)

    Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.

    That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”

    Chapter 17:

    Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.

    Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)

    [Post-reread note: There was not.]

    Chapter 18:

    Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.

    Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?

    Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.

    [Post-reread note: It was not.]

    Chapter 19:

    Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.

    Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.

    Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”

    I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”

    Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.

    [Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]

    Chapter 20:

    Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.

    The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.

    Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.

    Chapter 21:

    Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.

    Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.

    A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.

    Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.

    They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.

    At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.

    Chapter 22:

    Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.

    New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.

    Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.

    …And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.

    Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?

    [Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]

    This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.

    Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.

    [Post-reread note: It did not.]

    Chapter 23:

    Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.

    They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.

    Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.

    Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.

    (Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)

    Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?

    She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.

    [Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]

    Chapter 24:

    Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.

    I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…

    [Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]

    Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!

    …Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.

    Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”

    Valid, buddy.

    Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.

    Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!

    Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.

    There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?

    Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)

    But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.

    We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.

    But why is Alice worth that?

    There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!

    I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”

    But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.

    One chapter left to go.

    The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.

    Here goes nothing…

    Chapter 25, thread 1:

    I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.

    Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.

    …It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”

    Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.

    Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(

    Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.

    Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.

    Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?

    She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.

    [Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]

    To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!

    But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.

    There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.

    So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”

    [Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]

    Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”

    Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?

    Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??

    Chapter 25, thread 2:

    Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.

    I like this! Well-earned!

    Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.

    From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?

    They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…

    I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.

    Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.

    Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”

    I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.

    (And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)

    One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”

    Not buying that at all.

    Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.

    The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.

    What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?

    …on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.

    It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!

    But nope.

    So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.

    Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.

    (TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)

    #HisDarkMaterials

    #hisdarkmaterials
  30. Humanist+Humorist @[email protected] ·

    Re-listen Liveblog: La Belle Sauvage

    Doing a re-listen of books 1-2 in the Book of Dust trilogy, since book 3 just came out.

    I just finished the first one, La Belle Sauvage, liveblogging it on Mastodon and on Bluesky, Here’s a roundup post.

    (I haven’t read this book since it came out in 2017, and I deliberately didn’t reread my original 2017 reaction post to LBS until now. Feel free to look through both, see which things I had different reactions about, and how many times I just noticed the same thing twice.)

    La Belle Sauvage, chapters 1-3:

    This starts off so strong. Like Lyra opening TGC, Malcolm is an active, curious, fun kid! We get a ton of worldbuilding through the places he explores, and a ton more through “noticing what the adults pointedly aren’t telling him.”

    Not sure how well a reader could follow the background mystery if you didn’t know all the names and references from HDM. But if you have, it’s really juicy. Malcolm obvs has no idea, and it’s great how he fills the gaps with wild speculation.

    Our one glimpse of baby Lyra so far was super charming.

    Chapter 4:

    Detour into the POV of Farder Coram.

    In retrospect, a lot of this is an excuse to recap things we know from HDM, but the writing is engaging enough that it’s hard to mind.

    [Note after rereading my original reaction post: Huh, this annoyed me a lot more the first time around. Apparently it gets a lot more tolerable when you haven’t been deep in the original HDM recently.]

    Chapters 5-6:

    Hannah Relf, and the whole field of “alethiometry as a serious academic discipline” that she belongs to, is barely in HDM. Really cool to see it showcased with her younger self in action here.

    The way Malcolm gets roped into her spycraft is a little contrived, but I’ll allow it. Hannah’s ongoing stress about the morality of it helps.

    (Made more sense when adults were recruiting Lyra, she wasn’t just an unusually-sharp 11-year-old, they also knew she was part of an Important Prophecy.)

    The first titles Hannah lends Malcolm turn out to be “The Body in the Library” and “A Brief History of Time.”

    Anybody out there written “HDM AU of Agatha Christie”? It’s canon now.

    Chapters 7-9:

    Getting into the League of St. Alexander plot now, and, oof, still hits hard. An upsettingly realistic story of a group of kids being manipulated into turning on each other, and on the actually-supportive adults in their lives.

    Reminds me of the school sections in Nona the Ninth. There’s high-stakes politics and espionage happening around them, people are getting killed, we have a small group of good teachers trying their best to get normal lessons to the kids in spite of it all, and the whole thing is from the POV of the kids, who aren’t officially being told much, but they know something is up. Lots of urgently passing rumors, on the level of “well, my dad says he heard such-and-such, so I reckon that means…”

    Very different setups, but still, lots of parallels! And both good.

    Oh, one more thing!

    This St. Alexander appears to be an in-universe creation, but the Church official who tells his story also talks to the kids about Jesus – not in detail, just mentions of things like, their job is to spread The Love Of Jesus(TM).

    I checked out the HDM ebooks just to text-search them. The name “Christ” never comes up. The name “Jesus” only comes up in TAS, and it’s from Mary Malone. (Talking to Lyra — no mention of whether Lyra recognizes the name.) Nobody ever mentions Christmas or Easter, either.

    The Magisterium is explicitly Christian — TGC has Lyra mention someone being “baptized as a Christian.” (After that, the term disappears until, again, Mary in TAS uses it.) So this felt like a worldbuilding point, that their doctrine specifically de-emphasizes Jesus. No obligatory prayers, no lip service to “what would Jesus do,” no framing their actions in terms of “following the Word of Christ,” no references at all.

    …And now we’re in LBS, and this random person is telling a group of elementary-school kids “of course this is a Proper Country where we follow the Good Word about Jesus,” like of course that’s a common thing they’ve all heard of.

    Is this difference also a worldbuilding point? Or is it a Doylist thing where, in writing HDM, Pullman wasn’t ready to antagonize Jesus’ fans that directly, and now he is?

    (So far, no idea! TBD if anything in future chapters will make it clearer.)

    [Post-reread note: They did not make it clearer.]

    Chapters 10-11:

    Lors Asriel! HDM readers know in a few years he’ll murder a kid Malcolm’s age for a military advantage, but here, Malcolm doesn’t pick up anything sinister at all. Personal charisma on full blast. Don’t remember if Malcolm ever learns different, or not.

    [Post-reread note: Well, not in this book, at least.]

    Stray daemon details that caught my eye:

    • The shop teacher’s woodpecker daemon drills holes in scrap wood as a nervous tic
    • Malcolm’s unsettled Aster can take chimera forms, like an owl with duck feathers, but only experiments with that when nobody else is watching
    • Hyena daemon urinates in the road, while looking at Malcolm. Makes him feel so dirty/violated that he’s too embarrassed to tell anyone until his next meeting with Hannah

    Are we supposed to believe daemons have been doing that (just, you know, normally in private) all along? Not sure I buy it.

    [Post-reread note: There’s an upcoming journey with baby Lyra in which Malcolm is constantly aware of how often she needs to be fed and changed. The idea of feeding/changing Pan is never even mentioned. So, yeah, I don’t think it’s a general daemon bodily function. I think it’s is a skill this specific daemon has cultivated to freak people out.]

    Chapters 12-13:

    Oh, huh. Argument at Malcolm’s family pub, the phrase “scientific management of resources” gets thrown around. A slip from Pullman, or was “experimental theology” supposed to be a term from Church-controlled circles, not common in the general public?

    [Post-reread note: For now, I think it was just a slip from Pullman.]

    Argument is about the upcoming plot-point flood.

    Seems worth noting that the “modern, scientific” proponents are all characters who are going to be proven wrong. The Right Understanding comes from “the ancient wisdom of the gyptians who know how to read the signs” and “one guy’s granny.”

    Hannah gets access to a contraband alethiometer! From the description, this is the one Lyra will eventually get.

    Contrast to the Bodleian Library one she was using officially. Don’t think I realized there were different models before this. With only 6 ever made, I figured they were a matching set.

    The Bodleian one has full-color symbols! The stolen one has plain black ink lineart.

    Idle theorizing: all 6 were originally made with black lineart, but that faceplate was damaged and replaced at some point. The new artist either was told to paint the new symbols fancier, or just had fun with it.

    End of this latest chapter refers to Bonneville (the guy with the hyena daemon) as “a physicist.”

    So much for my half-baked theory that maybe “experimental theology” was a replacement term for “physics” specifically.

    Chapters 14-15:

    Higher-up spies encourage Hannah to keep talking with (from their POV) this random 11-year-old, but it gets in-universe justified in a way that works for me. (…I mean narratively, not ethically.)

    Alice (teen kitchen worker) calls Lyra a “little flirt” for giggling at Malcolm. Not creepy on its own, that’s a joke people make about babies…but knowing that Pullman is planning future Lyra/Malcolm, with more explicitly-creepy stuff in the lead-up…yeah, this is a retroactive big oof.

    Malcolm gets to meet Mrs. Coulter! Unlike with Asriel, he gets a bad vibe off her immediately. Well, she’s on track to murder a lot more children than Asriel will, so maybe it’s fair.

    (Also, Asriel shows care for Lyra, which biases Malcolm toward him instantly.)

    Part 1 ends (at the 54% mark) with the predicted Big Flood hitting. Alice, Malcolm, and Lyra get stranded together in a boat.

    Everything I remember being “meh” about this book is on their river journey. Plunging apprehensively onward…

    Chapter 16:

    Worldbuilding detail: pharmacies are marked with a green cross. (Not sure from context if it’s just a palette-swapped ➕️, or an actual ✝️.)

    The dynamic between Alice and Malcolm is really good here. Grudging teamwork.

    Malcolm and Aster see a drowned body during the flooding, and wonder “what happens to daemons when you die?”

    Surprised they wouldn’t know. Even with no deaths in their close family, surely it’s a thing children are taught about? (They’ve been reading murder mysteries! It never came up?)

    Different chat a few chapters ago, they saw Pan turning into a mole, and wondered how a baby daemon knows how to turn into a creature they’ve never actually seen.

    That I liked, because it doesn’t seem like there’s a clear, generally-known answer. One adult daemon offered “You just feel mole-y.”

    Chapter 17:

    Mention of a prophecy about “a boy” that might be Malcolm.

    Feels like overkill? Like “he can’t just be a normal person caught up in Lyra’s cosmic destiny, he’s gotta be special too.” (Don’t remember if there’s payoff for this later. Might like it more if it’s good. TBD.)

    [Post-reread note: There was not.]

    Chapter 18:

    Not much to say here except “go Alice.” Previously seen decking Bonneville with a chair, now she gets off a gun at him.

    Bonneville mentions “experimental theology” to Malcolm. Guess he doesn’t use “science”…?

    Malcolm has been seeing flecks/lights that Hannah thinks are migraine auras. He misheard it as “auroras”. Unsubtle hint that this is Dust’s way of guiding him? Hasn’t been plot-pivotal yet, so we’ll see.

    [Post-reread note: It was not.]

    Chapter 19:

    Reappearance of a trusted ally I forgot was coming back at all! Surprised and delighted.

    Kitten!Pan kneads Malcolm’s hand as he rocks Lyra. He thinks “she’s too young to know it’s taboo,” but I expect it’d hurt if she didn’t feel so comfy and cared-for with him.

    Earlier hints of “things in the river” now expanded with examples: mermaids, Father Thames, “old gods.”

    I know we meet some of these in later chapters. And, look, I’m good with Lyra’s world having more fantastical beings than we already saw. But it sure would be weird if, after all HDM, the message of LBS was “sure, the Magisterium is evil and their god sucks, but science also sucks and will lead you astray, the truth is in following the right religion and trusting the better gods.”

    Don’t remember if that’s how it actually ends! Just noting, as of now, the vibes feel odd.

    [Post-reread note: Good news, I don’t think that was the message. The possibly-god-ish creatures we meet are no more or less trustworthy than other people.]

    Chapter 20:

    Evil Magisterium group kidnapped Lyra, after a St. Alexander kid in the refugee group tipped them off. Malcolm hates him, which is fair, but his own family are also so awful to him that I get why he was won over in the first place. Praise and affirmation for a kid who isn’t getting any at home is one heck of a drug.

    The daring rescue is quite good! The Alice-Malcolm teamwork is really flourishing by now.

    Malcolm’s “aurora” pops up again, but only to highlight the place they were already going. Finding Lyra is all their own ingenuity.

    Chapter 21:

    Last quarter of the book, and now things get outright magical.

    Washing up on the island of a mystery woman with a cloud of butterflies. Malcolm first assumes one of them is her daemon, then wonders if, somehow, all of them are. Hey, I’ve written that fic.

    A bag they took off Bonneville has…an alethiometer inside. Malcolm figures it’s the famous missing one.

    Explains how conveniently Bonneville always caught up to them! And maybe why he was so convinced that “kidnapping Lyra” was the key to fixing his life in the first place.

    They leave the alethiometer with the probably-faerie woman. So I guess from now on it’ll be Missing For Real forever.

    At least it’s a more poetic end than “the kids drop it in the water and it gets crushed in the flood.” Getting some One Ring vibes here. It won’t get lost when it doesn’t want to.

    Chapter 22:

    Oh, they didn’t trade the alethiometer to the faerie, just its nice box? Huh. That’s less poetic, but a savvier move from Malcolm, so good for him.

    New batch of probably-faeries, in fancy dress, in the garden of a fancy-but-unreachable manor. They each have a bird, which might or might not be daemons.

    Really like the setup of “desolate ruins, hidden just outside the beautiful tranquil sphere of the garden.” Classic Fairyland worldbuilding.

    …And Bonneville isn’t dead, again. Ugh.

    Unless this is a faerie-thing taking his shape? Others are taking shapes of people familiar to Alice+Malcolm, including at least one who’s dead. Although I don’t remember him being that…and it’s enough of a satisfying twist, I feel like I would?

    [Post-reread note: No luck, this is just Bonneville.]

    This might retroactively ruin my “oh, nice, the alethiometer justifies how conveniently he always caught up with them” satisfaction.

    Will the narrative give him a new justification for this round? TBD.

    [Post-reread note: It did not.]

    Chapter 23:

    Meeting a giant in the water, talking him into opening a set of gates. Fully fairy-tale logic here, with Little Nemo type imagery. This team could make it through the Phantom Tollbooth or survive the Labyrinth, easy.

    They figure this guy is the minor god of some tributary, since he works for Father Thames, god of the Thames. Logical enough.

    Also, part of their scheme is making him believe Lyra is a princess. Not clear if he’s just gullible, or she has supernatural Princess Vibes that he can sense.

    Back in normal reality, a witch! Most human person they’ve met all day, but with her Arctic-tern daemon not in range at first, poor Malcolm assumes otherwise.

    (Briefly wonders if her branch of cloud-pine is her daemon. …I’ve written that fic too.)

    Okay, I know from HDM why the witches would have an interest in Lyra. What I’m not sure of is, why didn’t this one try to either (depending on clan) guide her to safety, or kill her?

    She shields them with what H2G2 would call a Somebody Else’s Problem field, but then just flies off again. Hmm.

    [Post-reread note: Yeah, this never gets resolved or comes up again. Why even put her in the book??]

    Chapter 24:

    Alice swiped a bunch of food from the faerie garden party, and the whole crew eats some now. I’m surprised it’s still food-shaped, outside that sphere of magic influence. They’re not hesitant to eat it, hm.

    I didn’t mention before, but the faerie woman with the butterflies breastfed Lyra, and Malcolm+Alice were immediately suspicious. So they have some idea of the dangers of eating unseelie food…

    [Post-reread note: Yeah, this goes nowhere.]

    Getting foreshadowing now that Bonneville is a ghost, which would be fine by me!

    …Nope, he’s alive, hyena daemon and all. Dammit.

    Malcolm, almost in these words: “I need an adult”

    Valid, buddy.

    Anyway, we’re trying to murder him again, and this time the hyena vanishes, so I guess it finally took. About time.

    Bonneville grabbed Alice’s daemon to force her to follow him, so Malcolm followed to help, while his own daemon stayed to guard Lyra. Forced to endure the distance pain because they had no one else to rely on. That was a good heroic sequence there!

    Mixed feelings about the rest. Alice already beat this guy twice, and yet he gets to keep coming back, until the boy character takes him on? Malcolm succeeds with an oar when Alice couldn’t with An Actual Gun? Not my favorite twist.

    There’s been an air of SA around Bonneville for a while. He got shunned from academia over an unspecified sex crime, which got mentioned so much that I figured it was setting up a dramatic reveal of the details, but now it seems like maybe not?

    Point is, it’s not unexpected that he tries to assault Alice. (Vague about the extent of it, since Malcolm’s POV doesn’t fully process what he sees.)

    But before now, all his creepiness was a means to the end of kidnapping Lyra. And here it seems like he forgets all about Lyra, his main goal is to assault Alice.

    We know why Lyra was worth a massive multi-day boat chase: she’s Mrs. Coulter’s baby, and he wanted her influence on his side.

    But why is Alice worth that?

    There’s no nice way to put this, sorry in advance: why not go after any of the thousand closer teenage girls who would be easier targets? This is so much work to attack a specific girl! Predators are lazy!

    I can sure imagine it being about “revenge for those two times she nearly killed him.”

    But: He doesn’t show that. There’s no “haha, now you’ll be sorry for everything you did to me!” type gloating. Can’t think of anything that foreshadowed his priority-switch away from Lyra. This is just me retconning in a reason, not the book giving one.

    One chapter left to go.

    The list of “points I expect this book to leave unresolved” has gotten pretty long. On first read, I remember thinking they were left hanging for the sequel to pick up! They…were not.

    Here goes nothing…

    Chapter 25, thread 1:

    I do like that they’ve washed up in a graveyard this time. Coffins in a stone mausoleum give them justifiably-still-dry wood to build fires with.

    Malcolm apologizes a lot to the skeletons. Good kid.

    …It’s just occurring to me that I would’ve loved a reveal that the hints about ghosts were foreshadowing “the ghosts of the graveyard, moved and affirmed by Malcolm’s respect, rise up to help him kill Bonneville.”

    Doubly so if this was Ghost Bonneville, seeking revenge on Alice for killing him. That unfinished business could have guided him after Alice, and Malcolm would need the supernatural help of the graveyard ghosts to kill him double-plus-dead.

    Feeling a little cheated we didn’t get this now, ngl :(

    Back on the morning after the flood, Hannah deduced that Malcolm would try to take Lyra to Asriel’s address.

    Good payoff: her allies have had boats looking for the canoe ever since. They even found Asriel first, got him in a boat, and so they found the canoe on the water! Probably would’ve fallen apart before the kids reached him, so instead, he reaches them. Moments before a Magisterium boat does, even! A good dramatic rescue scene.

    Bad lack-of-payoff: Did Hannah’s cool secret alethiometer come to anything at all?

    She didn’t use it to figure out where Malcolm was going, she just deduced that from the evidence + how well she knows Malcolm.

    [Post-reread note: I didn’t comment at the time, but this was in chapter 17. Which is also Hannah’s last appearance in the book. She gets mentioned in chapters 18 and 22, but never shows up on-page again.]

    To be clear, I like that bit! Their friendship is genuine and important. Giving it that kind of plot payoff was good!

    But there was never a different plot point that she did need the alethiometer for.

    There was also plenty of setup about how difficult it is. It takes a lot of study and cross-referencing. Hannah doesn’t have the magical intuition that Lyra does.

    So you could’ve made the payoff out of that instead. It answered something for her, she’s poring over the books looking at the symbols…and we, the readers, can connect them all to the bizarre events of Malcolm and Alice’s Excellent Unseelie Adventure. But Hannah doesn’t have that context. At last, she despairs. “I can’t do it! This is out of my league! It’s so obscure and complicated, only a genius could figure it out.”

    [Cue Lyra’s leitmotif from HDM playing in the background.]

    Heck, drop the whole Special Bonus Witch Prophecy, let Hannah deduce “a boy is going on a journey carrying a treasure” from the symbols she reads. She just can’t interpret anything more helpful, like “pick him up at this date and time.”

    Oh, and! About that prophecy! Why didn’t it say “a boy and a girl”?

    Alice was integral to Lyra surviving this trip. She did half the carrying! What gives, prophets? Behind every man is an unacknowledged woman, even in a witch prophecy??

    Chapter 25, thread 2:

    Alice gets to yell at Lord Asriel about how great Malcolm is, so don’t you dare disrespect everything he’s done.

    I like this! Well-earned!

    Alice has never hesitated to tell off Malcolm when she has a problem with him. So this reversal, telling off someone else in his defense, is really fulfilling. And you know she means it.

    From here they get to Jordan College, via Asriel flying a gyropter. (Helicopter.) I’m retroactively surprised Malcolm+Alice haven’t heard any before. Wouldn’t they be used for rescues? And to survey the flood damage?

    They gyropters also have earmuff/microphone setups to communicate over the rotors. Which has me retroactively wondering why nobody else has used radio. Not to communicate, not for news reports, not to play music in the pub…

    I was vaguely assuming the tech didn’t exist here! Now…huh.

    Asriel basically dumps the kids at Jordan (literally, the last scene is Malcolm collapsing on their carpet) and immediately biffs off to the North. A+ parenting, right there.

    Most of this journey has been “washing up at a sanctuary, feeling safe for a short time, then having to flee”, so it’s a little anticlimactic to end on “but THIS time it’ll be fine, no worries, roll credits.”

    I’d feel better if Hannah was here to greet them! Which would also salve the lack of Hannah in the back half of the book. She got a few scenes, chapters ago, then totally disappeared. Unsatisfying.

    (And just imagine if Hannah had brought Malcolm+Alice’s parents! We didn’t actually meet Alice’s before, but we met Malcolm’s, and surely all of them deserve that reunion!)

    One more anticlimax: Asriel tells the kids “never talk about this, not with anyone but each other, then you’ll be safe.”

    Not buying that at all.

    Their school is full of junior Magisterium spies. Teachers were getting fired. A local guy stood up to Church agents at the pub once, then he and his family had to flee the district.

    The town knows which kids went missing during the flood. And which one had a canoe.

    What stops the Church from kidnapping these kids the minute they get home, and forcing the intel out of them?

    …on a more upbeat note, why not give the kids clearance to talk about it with a whole circle of specific adults Asriel trusts? Farder Coram counts. Hannah deserves to.

    It took support, intel, and prep from several sympathetic adults to get these kids through the flood. If we ended with Asriel setting up a group of supporters to get them through whatever danger the Church brings down next, I’d feel reassured!

    But nope.

    So that’s La Belle Sauvage. Really strong start! Faceplanted in a whole lot of ways by the end.

    Might need a new thread for the “and ANOTHER thing that never got resolved–!” reactions that will undoubtedly hit me over the rest of the night.

    (TSC is checked out. Will start that some time soon.)

    #HisDarkMaterials

    #hisdarkmaterials
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