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The Tanuki Corner @[email protected] · 2026-04-17 · 13:47 UTC

Apologetics: Flippin’ Fatwa Friday – A Comparison of Claims About the Insanity of Jesus and the Insanity of Muhammad. (Part 2)

While epilepsy is a plausible explanation for Muhammad’s behavior, and an impossible one for Jesus’, another theory must be considered. The existence of personality disorders in both men has been suggested and it’s also worthwhile to examine the symptoms of them to see if they fit. Personality disorders exist when the patient’s way of thinking, perceiving, reacting, and relating to others becomes so pronounced, rigid, and maladaptive that they negatively affect work or interpersonal functioning. (9) Childhood trauma, verbal abuse, and cultural factors have also been linked to the development of personality disorders. (8) They can be identified by the lack of a clear, stable image of self, unrealistically high or low self-esteem, and an unawareness of how their thoughts or actions are problematic. (8) Patients may exhibit bad beliefs or actions, lack empathy or respect, and be emotionally detached or overly needy attention or care. (8) Their behavior may be inconsistent, frustrating, or confusing to others, and they may have issues understanding realistic and acceptable ways to treat others. (8) With the exception of anti-social personality disorder (which can appear as early as 11), personality disorders are identifiable by 18. (8) Left untreated, their disorders may result in poor relationships, occupational issues and impaired social functioning. (8) The ten different types of personality disorders are categorized by the DSM-5 into three main categories or “clusters.” (8)
The first category is known as Cluster A. (8) Cluster A personality disorders involve unusual or eccentric thinking or behavior. (8) Paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders fall into this category. (8) Paranoid personality disorder gives people a relentless, unmerited suspicion or distrust of others, with the belief that others are trying to demean, harm, or threaten them. (8) Schizoid personality disorder is less intense and is marked by a consistent pattern of detachment from or a general disinterest in personal relationships. (8) Patients with schizoid personality disorder usually have a limited range of emotions when with others. (8) Patients with schizotypal personality disorder experience a consistent pattern of discomfort and have a limited need for close relationships. Any relationships they have may be hindered by their distorted view of reality, superstitions, or strange behaviors. (8)
Meanwhile, Cluster B personality disorders involve dramatic or erratic and impulsive behavior and intense, unstable emotions. (8) The specific disorders that fall into Cluster B are antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, and histrionic personality disorders. (8)
Starting with the symptoms of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), antisocial personality disorder is displayed by a lack of respect towards others and a rejection of social norms and rules. (8) people with ASPD may break the law, cause harm to others, and refuse to take responsibility or display regard for the negative consequences of their actions. (8) They may be deceitful, exploitative, and reckless, all for personal profit or pleasure with no remorse, usually justifying or rationalizing their behavior in some way. (8) They may steal, harass others, manipulate, con, or destroy property. (9) They do not think about the consequences for or safety of themselves or others, and may suddenly change jobs, homes, or relationships, consume excessive amounts of alcohol or take illicit drugs, are socially and financially irresponsible, irritable, physically aggressive, abusive towards their spouse or partner, or polyamorous. (9) They’re extremely opinionated, self-assured, and arrogant, but can act charming, voluble, and verbally facile to get what they want. (9) ASPD can also be comorbid with impulse control, mood, anxiety, gambling, and bipolar disorder, as well as ADHD. (9)
The cause of anti-social personality disorder is unknown, though scientists believe that genetic and environmental influences may contribute to the development of ASPD. (9) It’s more often found among 1st degree relatives of patients who also have it than in the general population. (9) Children who have been abused or neglected, or who had parents with inconsistent disciplining or parenting styles, are at increased risk of developing it. (9)
To be diagnosed with ASPD, one must have a persistent disregard for the rights of others and the law, deceitfulness indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, and conning for personal gain. (9) There must also be impulsivity, irritability and aggression (constantly getting into physical fights and assaulting others), recklessly disregarding the safety of self or others, constant irresponsibility, and a lack of remorse. (9) These symptoms must be present before the patient is 15 years old. (9)
Meanwhile, borderline disorder is marked with difficulty regulating emotions, low self-esteem, mood swings, impulsivity, and relationship difficulties. (8) Symptoms of borderline disorder can also overlap with those presented in histrionic or narcissistic personality disorder and is commonly misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. (9) Patients with borderline personality disorder often feel furious or panicky when they feel abandoned, even if it’s for something small (like being slightly late.) (9) They may change their view of a person abruptly after a period of idealization, suddenly demeaning the other person. (9) Another trait of borderline personality disorder is that they have difficulty controlling their anger, becoming disproportionately angry, for which they will feel ashamed. (9) They may often self-sabotage, dramatically change their self-image, feel empty inside, self-mutilate or attempt suicide, and may have dissociative episodes, paranoid thoughts, or psychotic symptoms (such as hallucinations.) (9) The cause of this is most linked to childhood separation from caregivers, the death of a parent, and physical or sexual abuse. (9)
Histrionic personality disorder can be identified if the patient has intense, unstable emotions, a distorted self-image, dramatic, inappropriate, and attention-seeking behaviors, and self-esteem that’s dependent upon the approval of others. (8) They may use their physical appearance and act inappropriately in seductive or provocative ways. (8) Their emotions are persistently excessive, and rapidly shifting or shallow. (9) They are uncomfortable when they’re not the center of attention, are highly suggestible, theatrical and self-dramatizing, and interpret relationships as more intimate than they are. (9)
Narcissistic personality disorder is like histrionic personality disorder and involves a consistent pattern of perceived superiority or grandiosity, need for praise or admiration, and a lack of empathy. (8) Narcissists have difficulty regulating their self-esteem, needing praise and affiliations with special people or institutions to maintaining their self-esteem and is more common in men than women. (9) Narcissists overestimate their abilities and exaggerate their achievements, thinking they’re superior, unique or special. (9) They are preoccupied with fantasies of great achievements and feel they should only associate with others as special as themselves to support or enhance their self-esteem. (9) Narcissistic people may respond with rage or contempt or vicious counterattacks to criticism or avoid situations where they may fail. (9) To be a diagnosed narcissist, you must have a persistent pattern of grandiosity (exaggerated, unfounded sense of their own importance), preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited achievements, belief that they are special or unique, need to be unconditionally admired, exploit others, lack empathy, envy others, and are arrogant or haughty. (9)
Cluster C personality disorders involve severe fear and anxiety, with avoidant, obsessive-compulsive, and dependent personality disorder. (8) Avoidant personality disorder is marked by chronic feelings of inadequacy, and patients are highly sensitive to being negatively judged, avoiding social interaction for fear of rejection. (8) Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is marked by an extreme, consistent need for orderliness, perfectionism, and control, (8, 9) with a severe focus on rules, minute details, procedures, schedules, and lists to maintain a sense of control. (9) They repeatedly check for mistakes and pay extraordinary attention to detail, so much so that they may neglect other aspects of life. (9) They tend to be solitary in their endeavors; mistrusting others’ help and are rigid and stubborn in their activities. (9) They’re overly dedicated to work and productivity so much that leisure and relationships are neglected. (9) Time spent with friends tends to be formally organized activities and hobbies or recreational activities are viewed as important tasks requiring organization and hard work. (9) Affection is expressed in informal, stiff, or serious ways, and OCPD patients are intolerant of emotional or expressive behavior, overzealous, picky, and rigid on issues of morality, ethics, and values, applying rigid moral principles to themselves and others. (9) It’s different from OCD because OCPD patients don’t recognize the need to change. (8)
Dependent personality disorder involves a constant excessive need to be cared for by someone, submissiveness, constant reassurance, and inability to make decisions. They people-please, and display passive or clinging behavior. (8)
From even a cursory overview of Cluster A personality disorder, one can conclude that neither man exhibited a Cluster A personality disorder. Jesus had deep, stable relationships with many people. (3, 21) His predictions about His death, though critics have interpreted it as paranoia, were completely justified. (3) Likewise, Muhammad also had close relationships with many people and showed no pervasive paranoia. Thus, the analysis must shift to Cluster B and C disorders.
An analysis of the symptoms of Cluster B and C disorders shows Jesus’ life does not reflect any disorder from these categories either. Though Jesus was accused of being insane by his contemporaries, (Mark 3:21-22, John 10:20) (3) His responses to these accusations in passages such as Mark 3:31-35 and Matthew 12:46-50 are rational and calm. (3) Additionally, no mentally ill or evil person would have been able to speak or behave the way Jesus did. (21) All the evidence points to Him being a well-adjusted, mature person, with His words and deed never being in conflict with each other. (21) He was faultless in conduct, and all His virtues were perfectly in line with divine perfection. (14) He was always in control of Himself, even after betrayal; (Matthew 26:53-56) (3, 18) His teachings were not that of a lunatic; (i.e. “The Sermon on the Mount”) (3, 18) and He always demonstrated a concrete understanding of His identity and mission. (John 8:23) (3, 18)
So strong is the evidence that Jesus was not insane that even Bart Ehrman, one of the most prominent agnostic atheists in recent memory, said, “The reality is that a lot of people today who are predicting the imminent end of the world may have a few screws loose. But the kinds of expectations that Jesus held about the coming kingdom of God in a cataclysmic display of divine force were not ‘weird’ or ‘way out there’ or ‘psycho’ in his day. They were fairly common. Unless you want to say that all apocalyptic Jews were clinically crazy, I don’t think you can say Jesus was.” (Paragraph 18) (20) He continues in the next paragraph, “And he may well have thought (I think he did think) that he would be made the messiah in a future kingdom. That may have been a rather exalted view of himself, but I don’t think it makes Jesus crazy. It makes him an unusually confident apocalyptic prophet. There were others with visions of grandeur at the time. I don’t think that makes him mentally ill. It makes him a first-century apocalyptic Jew.” (Paragraph 19, sentence 7-12) (20) Christian apologist, Don Stewart, also writes “A pathology of Jesus is possible only upon the basis of a lack of acquaintance with the course and conclusions of New Testament criticism and an amateur application of the principles of the science of psychiatry.” (19) (Paragraph 25)
Further supporting that Jesus was not insane is that Romans didn’t execute people for insanity. (19) This theory was posed by Justin Meggit, a lecturer from the University of Cambridge, in his book The Madness of King Jesus: Why was Jesus Put to Death by His Followers Were Not? that Pilate and other Romans thought Jesus was insane and was executed as a royal pretender. (19) However, this explanation is insufficient as the Romans’ standard procedure was also to execute any would-be insurgents with their leaders. (19)
However, as with the accusations of epilepsy, Muhammad has a much harder time standing against the accusations of having some sort of personality disorder. Though the Muslim world views him as the greatest prophet in history, the universal messenger to all mankind, a perfect example of human behavior beyond reproach, sinless, but not without human failings, sent to present and confirm the monotheistic teaching preached in previous Abrahamic religions, (11, 14) history paints a different story. When one looks at the historical accounts of Muhammad’s life, we see a man whose behavior was flawed at best and utterly reprehensible at worst.
Muhammad was born in Mecca to a man named Abdullah (who died before he was born) and Aaminah on the 12th of Rabi-al-Awwal (around the 20th or 22nd of April 571.) (10) His grandfather, Abdul Muttalib, was the one who named him and took Muhammad to the Ka’ba where he performed Aqeeqah, praying to Allah for Muhammad’s health and long life, and giving thanks for his birth. (10) Aaminah, after suckling him for the first 7-9 days of his life, sent him to be brought up in the desert to become stronger and healthier. (10) He was given to a wet nurse named Halima, who was part of the Banu Saad branch of the Hawazin tribe. (10) His childhood was eventful, as numerous people attempted to kidnap or kill him, with some saying that he would become a king otherwise. (10) He stayed with Halima for an extended time by her request, (10) but Muhammad was eventually returned to his mother around the time he was five or six years old. (10) This time with his mother would be sadly short lived, as Aamina died on the return journey from Medina at Abwa, a village near Al-Juhfa, though some believe she died at Mecca when Muhammad was about 6-8 years old. (10)
After this, he lived happily with Abdul Muttalib and his aunts Hamzah and Safiyah, who were about his age. (10) This lasted for two years, and after Muttalib died, Muhammad was sent to live with his uncle, Abu Talib, the leader of the Hashim tribe, and his wife, Fatimah bint Asad. (11)
From there, Muhammad became a shepherd, then a merchant, working for a wealthy woman named Khadija, who was a third cousin of Muhammad’s mother and had three children from previous marriages. (11) He married her in 595 AD at the age of 25. (11) It was during his marriage to Khadija that he would be visited by Gabriel and commanded to recite verses from Allah. (11) In response, he believed he was possessed by a demon, became suicidal and repeatedly tried to jump off a cliff according to Sahih Bukhari. (11) More suicide attempts were made when the revelations stopped. (11)
Muhammad soon began sharing his revelations and initially gained a few followers. (11) After Abu Talib died, he fled Mecca to Medina to escape persecution from the polytheists in Mecca, who were accusing him of plagiarizing the stories of the ancients, also stealing from those of Abrahamic faiths, and claimed that he was illiterate. (11) During this time, his revelations read poetry, but alterations in the content of the verses followed Muhammad’s rising place in society. (11) The gradually became more straight forward and violent as he gained power, with these later revelations abrogating the earlier ones. (11) Once in Medina, he united the tribes there under the constitution of Medina and ordered his followers to not contact their relatives in Mecca and cut ties with non-Muslim relatives. (11)
While going to Medina, in March 624 AD, Muhammad and about 300 converts raided a Meccan merchant caravan, which led to the Battle of Badr when the Meccans retaliated. (11) The Muslims were victorious, killing 70 Meccans and taking 70 more as prisoners for ransom. (11) Surah 33:26 celebrates this victory, saying that Allah cast terror in their hearts so the Muslims could win. (14) In 629 AD, Muhammad invaded Mecca with ten-thousand men and won the city. (11) Three years later, in 632 AD, he became infirm with severe head pain and weakness, which may have been caused by an earlier event in which he was poisoned by a Jewess after the conquest of Khaybar. (11)
After Khadija died, Muhammad became known for being a womanizer, (11, 14) having at least nine wives by the end of his life (14) (though some say he had fifteen wives (11) and numerous concubines, including a Coptic slave named Mariyah. (11)  He was 50 when he married who was possibly his first new wife, Sauda bint Zam’ah, and married Aisha around this time, though there’s evidence that he may have married Aisha first after Khadija died. (Sahih Muslim volume 2, page 748) (14) Aisha was his favorite wife, and she was soon disturbed by Muhammad’s growing number of wives after he married his fourth wife. (14) Inevitably, his many marriages and favoritism between them caused great jealousy and dissention amongst his wives. (14)
This causes problems for Muhammad since in Sahih Muslim volume 4, page 1260, Muhammad said he was the most like Jesus out of “the whole of mankind.” (14) He even tried to outdo Jesus in Sahih Muslim volume 4, page 1230, says that he would be “preeminent among the descendants of Adam on the Day of Resurrection” and would serve as an intercessor for mankind. (14) While polygamy and caravan raiding were common facts of life in 7th-century Arabia, Muhammad was posited as a universal prophet and guide of mankind, making him subject to absolute standards. (14) However, he never condemned those practices, which stands in contrast to his claim to be like or outdo Jesus in morality. (14)
Furthermore, Muhammad’s wives Aisha and Zaynab bint Jahsh provide huge issues for Muhammad’s claim to be like Jesus. To start with Aisha, she was six when Muhammad married her according to the Hadiths after Muhammad allegedly had a dream about her twice in which she was drawn on a piece of silk. (1, 12) Thus, after Muhammad managed to convince her father, Abu Bakr, to go along with it, he married her and consummated the marriage when she was 9. (1, 12) She became his favorite wife, so much so that Muhammad’s other wives had to beg for equal treatment, causing dissention. (1, 12)
This is particularly startling as by all accounts; Muhammad was a pedophile. The practice of marrying girls young, especially once they hit puberty was common in pre-Islamic Arabia, but Muslims hold that Muhammad condemned their immorality. (12) If true, this also makes him a hypocrite. To get out of this, Muslims argue that he married Aisha as a part of Allah’s plan so Aisha could help girls her age with questions about sexual ethics and morals, and so her personality and life could be shaped by Muhammad so she could serve Allah well. (12) However, on this front, Muhammad didn’t have sufficient reason for Allah to ordain the marriage since he could have simply outlawed sex with young girls so girls Aisha’s age wouldn’t have to worry about it. (12) He also could have decreed that one had to wait until puberty to marry a girl. (12) Muslims have also argued that Muhammad married her because she was a precocious girl, but hadiths do not support this, as she seemed like a normal girl and Surah 65:4 of the Quran already allows pre-pubescent marriage. (12) There are also a few hadiths that say that Muhammad had a liking for young girls. (12) One of them says, “When I took the permission of Allah’s Apostle (the blessing and peace of Allah be upon him), he asked me whether I had married a matron. He said: ‘Why hadn’t you married a virgin that would play with you, and you would play with her?’” (Paragraph 22, sentence 1-2) (12) This not only terrible for Aisha because of the effects on her health, but because Muhammad was already old, marrying Aisha doomed her to a life of widowhood since Surah 33:53 prohibits marrying his widows. (12)
Moving on to Muhammad’s marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh, this marriage was in direct opposition to Jesus’ teaching in Luke 16:18 and Mark 10:9 which both condemn divorce. (3, 14) Zaynab was originally the wife of Muhammad’s adopted son, Zaid. (14) Muhammad lusted after her and told his son, who divorced her, and after Zaynab’s waiting period between divorce and remarriage, Muhammad married her as recorded in Sahih Muslim 1428b. (1, 14)
The way that Muhammad reacted to criticism and resistance is also extremely telling. Most of the individuals assassinated by Muhammad were killed for their satire against him or their challenges to his claim to be the prophet of Allah. (14) An-Nadr ibn al-Harith was assassinated by Muhammad for ridiculing the Quran and reciting Persian legends that were more beautiful than Muhammad’s recitations after the Battle of Badr. (14)
Ka’b ibn Ashraf was another victim of Muhammad’s. (14) He was a Jewish resident of Medina who composed satirical verses against Muhammad, using his talent in Mecca to get the Quraysh tribe to rise against Muhammad in response to the Battle of Badr. (14) Sahih Bukhari volume 4, page 168, Sahih Bukhari volume 5, page 248, Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasulullah page 367, and Ibn Sa’d in Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir volume 2, pages 36-37 all record Muhammad’s order for Ashraf’s death and the subsequent assassination. (14) Muhammad ordered his followers to kill Ashraf using any method necessary, including through lying and trickery. (14) Sahih Muslim volume 3, page 99 and Ibn Sa’d in Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir volume 2, pages 36-37 record that Muhammad’s followers did lie to lure Ashraf into the trap that led to his murder. (14)
Abu Rafi, the leader of the Banu Nadhir tribe was killed in Khaybar in a similar manner to Ashraf according to Sahih Bukhari volume 5, pages 253-254 and Ibn Ishaq in Sirat Rasulullah page 483. (14) Al-Harith ibn Suwayd ibn Samit and ‘Asma bint Marwan both died for satire, too. (Sirat Rasulullah pages 675-676) (14) Muhammad also allowed a follower of his named al-Zubayr, to torture a man to find out where a large sum of money was hidden. (14) When it was clear that there was nothing to be gained, Muhammad had him decapitated. (14)
Additionally, not only did Muhammad curse the Jews, but he also cursed the Christians (Surah 9:30), the opposite of what Jesus did in Luke 6:27-28, 9:55, 23:34. (3, 14) Muhammad’s initial contact with Christians were less frequent compared to his interactions with the Jews. (14)  From his experience with the Negus of Abyssinia, he originally treated Christians more favorably, regarding them as potential friends and allies, as shown in Surah 5:85, 22:40, and 30:4. (2, 14) This soon turned into antagonism as the Christians began challenging his claims to prophethood, specifically having issues with the Quran ignores the doctrine of Jesus’ atonement on the cross, (Surah 5:54, 60) and the ubiquitousness of the name “Maryam,” which is used both for the name of Moses’ sister and Jesus’ mother. (Sahih Muslim volume 3, page 1169) (14)
Later, during the clash with the Byzantines in Muhammad’s final years, Muhammad reviled the Christians for kufr (Surah 5:75-76) and in Sahih Muslim volume 3, page 965 and Muwatta Imam Malik 371, he so greatly hated the Jews and Christian that he commanded their expulsions. (14) As he was dying, he gave instruction to his follower, ‘Umar, to ensure the Jews would be driven out of the Arabian Peninsula. (14)
Perhaps the bloodiest example of Muhammad’s evil is what he did to the Medinan Jews (11) after the Battle of the Ditch, (14) also known as the Battle of the Trench, which took place in 627 AD. (11) After this battle and the ensuing siege, Muhammad led a wholesale massacre of the prisoners. (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasulullah page 464 and Ibn Sa’d Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir volume 2 page 93) (14) Muhammad ordered the men and boys to be beheaded, and the women and young children were sold into slavery. (11) According to al-Tabari, many of the heads were personally severed by Mehammed, filling a trench as they were brought to him. (11) Wiki Islam writes: “One of the explanations given by some Arab historians and biographers for Muhammad’s treatment of the Jews of Medina is that ‘the punishment of the Medina Jews who were invited to convert and refused, perfectly exemplify the Qur’an’s tales of what happened to those who rejected the prophets of old.’” (Paragraph 24) (11)
Muslims try to argue that this was standard procedure for military leaders, but it hardly fits into the standard of conduct that Jesus laid out. (14) Though many Old Testament prophets acted callously, Muhammad was expressly comparing himself to Jesus, who never behaved callously, much less beheaded hundreds of people. (14) From this we can see that Muhammad and his companions’ actions line up closer to the words of Jesus in John 3:19-20, 8:44, and Ephesians 5:12. (3, 14)
By even these few events in Muhammad’s life, it’s easy to believe that he may have had a personality disorder that falls into Cluster B. Certainly, Cluster A can be ruled out since, while Sahih Bukhari 3562 describes him as being “shier than a virgin girl,” (1, 11) he did not seem to exhibit paranoia or have issues with his relationships of the type experience by those with Cluster A personality disorders. Cluster C can also be largely ruled out, with the exception of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Thus, it’s possible that Muhammad could have had narcissistic, borderline, anti-social, or histrionic personality disorder, with the most plausible one being borderline. From historical accounts of his life, he was constantly abandoned as a child, he was callous, didn’t respond well to criticism, was self-seeking, controlling, a womanizer, a pedophile, was suicidal, etc.
Another theory as to why Jesus and Muhammad said the things they did is that they may have had dissociative identity disorder (DID). Dissociative identity disorder was formerly known as multiple or split personality disorder and is extremely rare, with a small U.S. study finding that it only affects 1.5% of people. (16) Typically, it’s caused by severe trauma, stressful experiences, or abuse during childhood which forces the patient to develop two or more separate personalities as a coping mechanism. (16) These personalities – known as “alters” – may have different behaviors, memories, thought patterns, expressions, ethnicities, and ways of interacting with things. (16) These alters control the patient’s behavior at different times. (16) Memories may not transfer from one personality to another, leaving gaps in the patient’s memory as personalities switch in response to different triggers. (16) Symptoms of DID begin to appear between five to ten years old and are commonly overlooked by parents, guardians, and family members, and often mistaken for other disorders such as ADHD. (16) Symptoms include feeling detached from reality, confused by what others say about your behavior, stress from not being in control, feeling like you’re watching yourself from the outside, and amnesia. (16)
There are two forms of dissociative identity disorder, called possession and non-possession. (16) During possession, the alters or identities present as though an outside entity took control of the body, with the patient speaking or acting differently in a way that’s obvious to others. (16) In non-possession, the identities are less known to others, with patients feeling like they are having an out-of-body experience, unable to control their speech, emotions, or behaviors. (16) In both cases, the switch is unwanted or involuntary. (16) Because of this, DID is often accompanied by anxiety, delusions, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and substance abuse disorder, with more than 70% of DID patients attempting suicide or self-mutilating. (16)
Like with the other accusations of epilepsy or the existence of various personality disorders, there is no evidence from Jesus’ life, actions, or words to support His having dissociative identity disorder. From the Gospels, we know that He likely had a stable family life, had a solid understanding of who He was, understood His mission, and never seemed to switch from one identity to another. (3)
On the other hand, Muhammad has more to support the possibly of having dissociative identity disorder. He was given away as a baby, had people trying to kidnap or kill him, was sent back to his mom, soon orphaned, raised by his grandfather until he passed, then was sent to his uncle. This could have set up the foundation for developing DID, but because of how well-timed some of his revelations were and the involuntary nature of DID, doubt can be reasonably cast on this diagnosis. For example, in Sahih Bukhari 4788, Aisha comments, “I feel that your Lord hastens in fulfilling your wishes and desires,” (1) in response to Muhammad’s revelation of Surah 33:51 (2) which helped justify his marriage to Zaynab bint Jahsh.
Additionally, the very existence of dissociative identity disorder is widely disputed amongst doctors, with many saying that it’s not a real disorder. Thus, further doubt can be put on this diagnosis for both Jesus and Muhammad.
However, if neither man were epileptic or insane, this leaves what’s possibly the oldest and most serious accusation against either of them: demon possession, which will be discussed in the next post.
Until next time,
M.J.
#Allah #Apologetics #Bible #Blog #Christian #Christianity #DID #DissociativeIdentityDisorder #faith #FlippinFatwaFriday #god #hadith #Hadiths #Islam #jesus #MentalHealth #Muhammad #Muslim #OpinionPeice #PersonalityDisorders #Quran #Religion #Writing

#allah #apologetics #bible #blog #christian #christianity
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2026-04-26 · 19:25 UTC

#AnasaziBean planting & care
"Looking to grow beautiful, healthy Anasazi beans in your garden? This guide covers planting, support, watering, and harvesting so you can enjoy them as fresh #SnapBeans or fully dried #StorageBeans.
QUICK FACTS
Sun: Full sun
Soil: Well-drained soil
Planting: After all danger of frost has passed
Spacing: Sow about 2 in. apart; thin to 4 in. apart
Support: Trellis or fence recommended (vigorous climber)
Harvest (dry beans): When pods are brown and fully dry
ANASAZI BEANS PLANTING & CARE
Anasazi beans are a striking maroon-and-white variety with a sweet, nutty flavour and a hearty texture. They’re excellent in baked beans, Tex-Mex dishes, and alongside rice. They’re also drought-tolerant once established and often cook faster than pinto beans (many cooks find they require less soaking).
With successive plantings, Anasazi beans can be enjoyed as green beans or left to mature for dried beans.
PLANTING
- Choose a location with full sun and well-drained soil.
- Plant after the risk of frost has passed and soil has warmed.
- Sow seeds 1–1.5 in. deep, spacing about 2 in. apart.
- Water after planting to settle soil; keep soil lightly moist (not soaked) until germination.
- Thin seedlings to about 4 in. apart once they are established.
- Provide a trellis, fence, or stakes—Anasazi beans are vigorous climbers.
- As vines grow, gently guide them onto the support to encourage upward growth.
CARE TIPS
Watering: Water deeply 1–2 times per week depending on heat and rainfall. Keep soil evenly moist, but avoid waterlogging.
Support: A trellis improves airflow, keeps pods cleaner, and makes harvesting easier.
Fertilizing: Beans fix their own nitrogen. If your soil is poor, add compost before planting or use a light, balanced fertilizer early in growth—avoid heavy nitrogen, which can reduce pod production.

HARVESTING
- For fresh eating (green beans): Harvest pods young and tender.
- For dried beans: Leave pods on the plant until they turn brown and dry.
- Harvest plants or pick pods before prolonged wet weather to reduce mould risk.
- Shell beans and allow them to dry completely before storage.
- Store fully dried beans in a cool, dry place in an airtight container."
Source:
https://ttseeds.com/blogs/vegetable-growing/t-and-t-anasazi-beans
#SolarPunkSunday #DroughtResistantCrops #Beans #Resiliency #FoodSecurity
#NativeSeeds #NativeAmericanFoods #ClimateChangeGardening

#anasazibean #snapbeans #storagebeans #solarpunksunday #droughtresistantcrops #beans
Licho @[email protected] · 2026-05-10 · 17:28 UTC

Tips for the #solarpunk authors on how to get tension
- the #utopia doesn't have to be everywhere. Neighboring neo-industrial country getting to power, areas less lucky wr. To climate disaster. Are the solarpunks privileged with less disasters or do they have stronger community bonds that allow them to function and be prepared? So many questions and potential storylines.
- contrast beautiful, hopeful world with personal tragedy as the story driving force.
- ffs it's punk so remember to make it anti-institutional, anarchist and decentralized. It's solarpunks not solarskinhead.
- global religion monoculture is not punk (I'm looking at you monk and robot) diversity and mess is.

#solarpunk #utopia
🌜Lady Marzanna🌛 God of Dough @[email protected] · 2025-12-24 · 11:49 UTC

Beauty Tips with Lady Marz
Annoyed that your lipstick doesn't have a crisp edge?
Grab a flat fine angled brush, dab a little concealer on the back of your hand, & load up the brush with a small amount of concealer.
Gently dab over any rough edges to touch up your lipstick!
Bonus tip: do this with your lip liner before applying your lipstick. This makes the edges of your lipstick less likely to bleed into your concealer.
#findom #femdom #feminization #sissification

#findom #femdom #feminization #sissification
Chuck Darwin @[email protected] · 2026-01-09 · 17:30 UTC

In 2026 America, we are being sold a cheap, brutish, ugly, superficial, violent view of the world.
We are told that our world is one in which you #FAFO.
One in which failure to obey a man with a gun means certain, justifiable death.
We are told that this world is the only world possible.
And sometimes that seems true -- as I write to you from Minneapolis, where on Thursday I found myself retracing my steps:
driving the less than five miles from my Minneapolis home to a nearby neighborhood in South Minneapolis.
Less than six years ago I biked here, wearing my clergy collar, to attend a clergy protest and prayer service after the murder of #George #Floyd.
Half a mile away from that murder, this week brought another killing by a uniformed officer.
💥This time, they killed a 37-year-old white mother.
💥Then they descended upon the high school next to my church, where students were tear-gassed and two teachers were taken away, school windows broken, teenagers in tears.
We lit candles that night at church.
Again, the next day, on Thursday, we donned our clericals and stoles and bowed our heads.
How could we? How could we not?
Even though my kids are home from school ❌because the Minneapolis School District deemed our streets to be unsafe for children due to ICE.
Even though as I write these words, I am late to pick up my son.
♦️We are told that there is not enough for everyone, and so you have to take as much as you can for as long as you can,
and if that means cheating other people—well, then you’re the smart one
and the other people, the ones who can’t afford their heating bill: They’re suckers.
♦️We are told that our only protection comes in dollar bills and hunks of metal,
that our best knowledge and wisdom are housed in cold and costly data centers.
♦️That what is most beautiful is most expensive and most altered, by surgeons’ knives or digital filters.
♦️We are told we don’t know any better and that there are evil people trying to take what is rightfully ours and so we have to purge ourselves of them and their blood. -- The blood we share.
What have you done?
Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!
https://newrepublic.com/article/205114/renee-good-minneapolis-mother-pastor

#fafo #george #floyd
TheClassicBee @[email protected] · 2026-05-09 · 14:30 UTC

The Apps That Made Social Feel Like Home

There is a specific kind of joy that comes from opening an app and feeling – before you even do anything – that someone built it for you. Not for advertisers. For you, the person holding the phone.
That was Apollo. That was Twitterrific. That was Tweetbot. That was Spring. Third-party apps that wrapped Reddit and Twitter in something the official versions never quite managed: the craft. You could feel the opinion of the developer in every swipe gesture, every haptic tap, every transition. These apps had taste.
The platform gives you the water. The third-party app gives you the glass, and some of those glasses were beautiful.
Then came the API shutdowns. Reddit killed Apollo in 2023 with pricing that made no economic sense for indie developers. Twitter became X and quietly strangled its third-party ecosystem. One by one, the lights went out. It felt less like a business decision and more like a demolition, like tearing down a neighbourhood to build a parking lot.
Which is exactly why Mastodon feels different today. Open protocols mean that third-party clients are not a tolerated exception, they are the intended design. Apps like Ivory (built by Tapbots, the same people behind Tweetbot) or Mona or Ice Cubes exist not despite Mastodon but because of it. The ecosystem remembers what the internet once valued: that the interface is not a moat, it is an invitation.
I am under no illusion that Mastodon has replaced the reach or chaos of the platforms it mirrors. But every time I open a well-built third-party client, I feel that familiar warmth. I remember that the era was never really gone. It just needed a platform willing to let it exist.
#Tech #review #apps #blog #blogging #writing #iOS #social #twitter #Mastodon #Reddit #apollo #Ivory

#tech #review #apps #blog #blogging #writing
TheClassicBee @[email protected] · 2026-05-09 · 14:30 UTC

The Apps That Made Social Feel Like Home

There is a specific kind of joy that comes from opening an app and feeling – before you even do anything – that someone built it for you. Not for advertisers. For you, the person holding the phone.
That was Apollo. That was Twitterrific. That was Tweetbot. That was Spring. Third-party apps that wrapped Reddit and Twitter in something the official versions never quite managed: the craft. You could feel the opinion of the developer in every swipe gesture, every haptic tap, every transition. These apps had taste.
The platform gives you the water. The third-party app gives you the glass, and some of those glasses were beautiful.
Then came the API shutdowns. Reddit killed Apollo in 2023 with pricing that made no economic sense for indie developers. Twitter became X and quietly strangled its third-party ecosystem. One by one, the lights went out. It felt less like a business decision and more like a demolition, like tearing down a neighbourhood to build a parking lot.
Which is exactly why Mastodon feels different today. Open protocols mean that third-party clients are not a tolerated exception, they are the intended design. Apps like Ivory (built by Tapbots, the same people behind Tweetbot) or Mona or Ice Cubes exist not despite Mastodon but because of it. The ecosystem remembers what the internet once valued: that the interface is not a moat, it is an invitation.
I am under no illusion that Mastodon has replaced the reach or chaos of the platforms it mirrors. But every time I open a well-built third-party client, I feel that familiar warmth. I remember that the era was never really gone. It just needed a platform willing to let it exist.
#apollo #apps #blog #blogging #iOS #Ivory #Mastodon #Reddit #review #social #Tech #twitter #writing

#apollo #apps #blog #blogging #ios #ivory
Sean @[email protected] · 2026-04-06 · 21:00 UTC
On Trip-Hammers and Rolling Mills
The breastplate of an armour from Campania in southern Italy around 300 BCE. Originally it would have been mached with a backplate, bronze belt,greaves, and probaably reinforcements for the straps over the shoulders and under the armpits. Leeds, Royal Armouries, Object number II.197 b
Over on his site Bret Devereaux has a good description of a problem in Roman Military Equipment Studies. In book 6 of his histories, Polybius says that most Roman infantry wear a plate of bronze a span broad called a kardiophylax “heart-protector” on their breast, except for the wealthy who wear coats of mail. No such plate survives from a Roman site after 300 BCE, and no sculpture or painting shows it. As Roman rule expands across Italy, locals stop building tombs with detailed paintings full of arms and armour, and body armour tends to be a rare find. By the fifth century BCE, Samnites and Campanians had replaced simple disc breastplates with more complex arrangements of a breastplate, a backplate, a bronze belt and armoured straps over the shoulders and under the arms. We therefore have to assume that Romans either reverted to a style of armour from several hundred years before, or that Polybius’ description just mentions one-part of a seven-part armour. To my knowledge, no other surviving writer says that Romans wore such a breastplate, and there are no carvings or paintings which show Romans wearing them (Varro’s pectorale was made of strips of leather, De Lingua Latina 5.24). Both interpretations match objects from the ancient Mediterrean, and both match later armour from other cultures such as the “good iron for his body” worn by Robert the Bruce’s militia in 13181 and char-aina “four mirrors” armour in the Persianate world. I am doubtful that most Romans could afford not only a helmet, a sword, and and iron-bound shield but most of a bronze breastplate, but Devereaux is more confident. There are a lot of things to think about here, such as why the Roman Republic, a relatively egalitarian society, did not leave much art which showed ordinary soldiers. However, this week I will write down my thoughts about one technical question which I took the time to work through.
A Samnite bronze belt. These covered the waist below the bottom of a short disc breastplate. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1991.171.50
I think that if you wanted to make a bronze breastplate in the ancient world, you took an ingot and hammered it thin (possibly starting by melting it and pouring it onto a broad flat stone). You need to stop frequently, heat, and cool in air or quench in water to anneal it so it does not get too hard and brittle and crack. Devereaux thinks that they were “probably produced from sheet metal (sheet bronze, in particular), rather than forged from an ingot.” In a comment he referred me to David Sim in the UK.
I don’t own Sim’s book Iron for the Eagles but I do own Roman Imperial Armour (Oxbow Books, 2012) by David Sim and J. Kaminski which presents Sim’s theory (and Sim’s article in Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2003/4). Sim’s argument seems to take the following form (pp. 49-57): some armour from the Roman empire has smooth, parallel surfaces and consistent thickness. I don’t know any way to do this by hand or with powered up-and-down motion, but I can do it with a pair of rollers turned by hand and an assistant feeding metal between them. Such rollers would likely have been recycled when no longer needed and mounted in wooden machines, therefore would have left no archaeological evidence.
I don’t know how common the iron or copper-alloy sheet with smooth, parallel surfaces actually is. Table 7 of the book shows that one part of a Roman armour or shield usually varies in thickness across its surface by a factor or 2 or 3 which is typical of low-tech armour. The main examples of smooth parallel surfaces seem to be scale armour and layers within a sheet of iron or steel, and the paper on that steel notes that the same could probably be achieved with a trip-hammer (Fulford, Sim, and Doig 2004: 201). A trip-hammer is a long hammer on a pivot, whose long end comes close to a turning shaft driven by water or a motor. Pegs on the shaft lift the hammer and cause it to strike an anvil in a steady rhythm with more than human force, so the operator just has to focus on positioning the work.
Cross-section of a Roman shield boss from Newstead. Sim sees this as metal which was probably created by hammering with a trip-hammer or rolling in a mill because some layers within the iron are smooth (but look at the bottom layer with its bump towards the left). After Figure 12.5 from Fulford, Sim and Doig 2004
Whereas trip-hammers were widely used in the Roman empire, late medieval Europe, and China, roller mills for sheet metal only appear in Europe in the 18th century, and mills for making bar iron into rods for nails only in the 16th century. That is almost 2000 years later than Polybius. Forming two cylinders and mounting them parallel to one another with handmade tools is harder than it looks, and making an adjustable mill that can produce more than one thickness is even harder. It was hard to justify specialized machines before the 20th century, because labour was cheap and markets were unstable. You could not rely on making one specialized thing for a distant market, because one day the seas would be closed by pirates or the road over the mountains would be shut to keep the plague out. If you wanted to keep in business, you needed to produce a variety of goods, or simple and versatile goods like nails. Copper alloys were traded in ingots, and iron was traded in bars, because skilled metalworkers could make anything you wanted from the raw material. If you bought specialized pre-made forms, you might find that there was no market for finishing them.
To make a breastplate, you do not want sheet metal of uniform thickness. You will want the front and center to be thicker and stronger, and the sides to be thinner, because you are most concerned with being stabbed or shot through the vital organs by someone in front of you. As you stretch the metal to fit around your body, it will get thicker in some places and thinner in others, and if you have time to take care you will put the thick metal in the middle and thin near the edges. Nobody but you and your servant will ever see the inside, so it does not matter if the inside is lumpy and oxidized as long as the outside is smooth and beautiful. So there would be no benefit to using rollers, as there would be for making 0.3 mm stock for scale armour and applied decorations.
Sim’s approach in Roman Imperial Armour seems quite a contemporary one, with a focus on specialized labour-saving machines, uniform properties and dimensions. Moving between contemporary and traditional approaches often takes some adjusting, as when I volunteer on carpentry projects with no wood-to-wood joinery and everything butted and nailed together and my inner fourteenth-century person has to take a lie down and drink some ale. Reenactor Matthew Amt has some disagreements with how Sim makes pilum heads and spearheads, and a specialist in reproducing ancient metalwork did not like the book:
Roman Imperial Armour: The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour overreaches in basing so many of its assertions on the limited experience of a hobbyist blacksmith. It would be presumptuous for a metal-detectorist to write a treatise on archaeological practice, but for some reason academics think that any experience at all qualifies them to extrapolate on ancient craft industries.
no citation because this was from a private forum discussion! Ask me in person if you want to know who said this.
Iron for the Eagles has a very good reputation and I hope to read it one day.
Also, a roller mill is a crank-based mechanism. Cranks were probably invented in Iberia around the fifth century BCE. In the last few centuries BCE, Italians were starting to adopt them for purposes like milling grain. The famous rotary querns from Pompeii were a new and high-tech way of making your flour. It is only in the past few decades that it became clear when and where rotating millstones were invented. Sim and Kaminski know some of this history because they cite L. Sprague de Camp’s 1963 The Ancient Engineers. However, they don’t notice that if cranks were a new technology, its unlikely that they were immediately applied to milling. Europeans had been using cranked grindstones for at least 700 years before they started to use cranked roller mills for metalworking. That suggests that adapting the crank mechanism to metalworking is not an obvious next step. And central Italy in the third and second century BCE was not a center of mechanical and metallurgical innovation, but a place which was dazzled by Celtic swords and Hellenistic devices like the Antikythera mechanism. Slaves from the east seem to have replaced Italy’s native textile traditions by the end of the Republic because they were cheap and clever and it was easier to let them do what they knew how to do than retrain them.
There were a few ares where Imperial Roman technology was similar to 16th-18th century Europe, such as the size of ships and the availability of iron. Celts and Romans did use a lot of thin iron, bronze, silver, and brass sheet, and making such sheet by hand and then smoothing it out is time-consuming and wasteful. The shield from Dürrnberg grave 373 had many iron reinforcements just 0.15-0.20 mm thick after corrosion.2 I am open to the possibility that trip-hammers or stamping mills were used to beat out sheet in the Roman empire, since they were used for other tasks. I might even be convinced that rolling mills were used in some places for specific purposes like making very thin brass sheet for strapends, lanterns, and scale armour. The Roman empire had large-scale production in centralized locations for distribution by sea and fairly extensive use of water power. However, I would want much more evidence to believe in roller mills in Polybius’ Italy, and I expect that if some shops had trip-hammers to bang out helmets and buckets, others just used teams of sweaty men with hammers. As late as the First World War, some firearms were made in giant factories, and others were made with hammers and files in one-room workshops in Spain.
There are lots of threads I would like to pull further, like when sheet metal in standard gauges first appeared, and my onetime teacher John Peter Oleson’s argument about whether the ships from Lake Nemi in Italy had cranks on their pumps (in 1984, he thought the cranks were “archaeologically a fantasy” based on misinterpreting fragments of wood). I never got around to finishing Panagiota Manti‘s thesis on casting ancient Greek helmets. However, I hope that this shows why I am open to the use of articulated cuirasses in Polybius’ Italy, somewhat less open to the use of trip-hammers, and quite skeptical of the use of roller mills or armourers who started with sheet metal. Ancient metalworking is an exciting topic where archaeologists, metallurgists, and makers can work together, but its hard to keep up with.
Unlike ancient metalworkers, I am not secretive about my methods! But unlike many ancient writers I am not independently wealthy. If you can, please support this site.
Further Reading
Michael Fulford, David Sim, Alistair Doig, “The production of Roman ferrous armour: a metallographic survey of material from Britain, Denmark and Germany, and its implications,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, Volume 17 (2004) pp. 197-220
(scheduled 6 April 2026)
Edit 2026-04-06: first photo is in the wrong museum! Had a quick look at the book by Oleson.
1. https://www.rps.ac.uk/mss/1318/29 I will discuss and translate this in my second article on linen armour for Medieval Clothing & Textiles ↩︎
2. https://doi.org/10.11588/jrgzm.2009.1.16569 I don’t yet have a Zotero plugin in this browser to paste bibliographic details, but you can find them in “Plywood shields in European history,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 23/24 (2022/23) pp. 9-23 ↩︎
#ancient #armour #bonusPost #LSpragueDeCamp #methodology #response
#ancient #armour #bonuspost #lspraguedecamp #methodology #response
Sean @[email protected] · 2026-04-06 · 21:00 UTC
On Trip-Hammers and Rolling Mills
The breastplate of an armour from Campania in southern Italy around 300 BCE. Originally it would have been mached with a backplate, bronze belt,greaves, and probaably reinforcements for the straps over the shoulders and under the armpits. Leeds, British Museum, object Object number II.197 b
Over on his site Bret Devereaux has a good description of a problem in Roman Military Equipment Studies. In book 6 of his histories, Polybius says that most Roman infantry wear a plate of bronze a span broad called a kardiophylax “heart-protector” on their breast, except for the wealthy who wear coats of mail. No such plate survives from a Roman site after 300 BCE, and no sculpture or painting shows it. As Roman rule expands across Italy, locals stop building tombs with detailed paintings full of arms and armour, and body armour tends to be a rare find. By the fifth century BCE, Samnites and Campanians had replaced simple disc breastplates with more complex arrangements of a breastplate, a backplate, a bronze belt and armoured straps over the shoulders and under the arms. We therefore have to assume that Romans either reverted to a style of armour from several hundred years before, or that Polybius’ description just mentions one-part of a seven-part armour. To my knowledge, no other surviving writer says that Romans wore such a breastplate, and there are no carvings or paintings which show Romans wearing them (Varro’s pectorale was made of strips of leather, De Lingua Latina 5.24). Both interpretations match objects from the ancient Mediterrean, and both match later armour from other cultures such as the “good iron for his body” worn by Robert the Bruce’s militia in 13181 and char-aina “four mirrors” armour in the Persianate world. I am doubtful that most Romans could afford not only a helmet, a sword, and and iron-bound shield but most of a bronze breastplate, but Devereaux is more confident. There are a lot of things to think about here, such as why the Roman Republic, a relatively egalitarian society, did not leave much art which showed ordinary soldiers. However, this week I will write down my thoughts about one technical question which I took the time to work through.
A Samnite bronze belt. These covered the waist below the bottom of a short disc breastplate. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1991.171.50
I think that if you wanted to make a bronze breastplate in the ancient world, you took an ingot and hammered it thin (possibly starting by melting it and pouring it onto a broad flat stone). You need to stop frequently, heat, and cool in air or quench in water to anneal it so it does not get too hard and brittle and crack. Devereaux thinks that they were “probably produced from sheet metal (sheet bronze, in particular), rather than forged from an ingot.” In a comment he referred me to David Sim in the UK.
I don’t own Sim’s book Iron for the Eagles but I do own Roman Imperial Armour (Oxbow Books, 2012) by David Sim and J. Kaminski which presents Sim’s theory (and Sim’s article in Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2003/4). Sim’s argument seems to take the following form (pp. 49-57): some armour from the Roman empire has smooth, parallel surfaces and consistent thickness. I don’t know any way to do this by hand or with powered up-and-down motion, but I can do it with a pair of rollers turned by hand and an assistant feeding metal between them. Such rollers would likely have been recycled when no longer needed and mounted in wooden machines, therefore would have left no archaeological evidence.
I don’t know how common the iron or copper-alloy sheet with smooth, parallel surfaces actually is. Table 7 of the book shows that one part of a Roman armour or shield usually varies in thickness across its surface by a factor or 2 or 3 which is typical of low-tech armour. The main examples of smooth parallel surfaces seem to be scale armour and layers within a sheet of iron or steel, and the paper on that steel notes that the same could probably be achieved with a trip-hammer (Fulford, Sim, and Doig 2004: 201). A trip-hammer is a long hammer on a pivot, whose long end comes close to a turning shaft driven by water or a motor. Pegs on the shaft lift the hammer and cause it to strike an anvil in a steady rhythm with more than human force, so the operator just has to focus on positioning the work.
Cross-section of a Roman shield boss from Newstead. Sim sees this as metal which was probably created by hammering with a trip-hammer or rolling in a mill because some layers within the iron are smooth (but look at the bottom layer with its bump towards the left). After Figure 12.5 from Fulford, Sim and Doig 2004
Whereas trip-hammers were widely used in the Roman empire, late medieval Europe, and China, roller mills for sheet metal only appear in Europe in the 18th century, and mills for making bar iron into rods for nails only in the 16th century. That is almost 2000 years later than Polybius. Forming two cylinders and mounting them parallel to one another with handmade tools is harder than it looks, and making an adjustable mill that can produce more than one thickness is even harder. It was hard to justify specialized machines before the 20th century, because labour was cheap and markets were unstable. You could not rely on making one specialized thing for a distant market, because one day the seas would be closed by pirates or the road over the mountains would be shut to keep the plague out. If you wanted to keep in business, you needed to produce a variety of goods, or simple and versatile goods like nails. Copper alloys were traded in ingots, and iron was traded in bars, because skilled metalworkers could make anything you wanted from the raw material. If you bought specialized pre-made forms, you might find that there was no market for finishing them.
To make a breastplate, you do not want sheet metal of uniform thickness. You will want the front and center to be thicker and stronger, and the sides to be thinner, because you are most concerned with being stabbed or shot through the vital organs by someone in front of you. As you stretch the metal to fit around your body, it will get thicker in some places and thinner in others, and if you have time to take care you will put the thick metal in the middle and thin near the edges. Nobody but you and your servant will ever see the inside, so it does not matter if the inside is lumpy and oxidized as long as the outside is smooth and beautiful. So there would be no benefit to using rollers, as there would be for making 0.3 mm stock for scale armour and applied decorations.
Sim’s approach in Roman Imperial Armour seems quite a contemporary one, with a focus on specialized labour-saving machines, uniform properties and dimensions. Moving between contemporary and traditional approaches often takes some adjusting, as when I volunteer on carpentry projects with no wood-to-wood joinery and everything butted and nailed together and my inner fourteenth-century person has to take a lie down and drink some ale. Reenactor Matthew Amt has some disagreements with how Sim makes pilum heads and spearheads, and a specialist in reproducing ancient metalwork did not like the book:
Roman Imperial Armour: The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour overreaches in basing so many of its assertions on the limited experience of a hobbyist blacksmith. It would be presumptuous for a metal-detectorist to write a treatise on archaeological practice, but for some reason academics think that any experience at all qualifies them to extrapolate on ancient craft industries.
no citation because this was from a private forum discussion! Ask me in person if you want to know who said this.
Iron for the Eagles has a very good reputation and I hope to read it one day.
Also, a roller mill is a crank-based mechanism. Cranks were probably invented in Iberia around the fifth century BCE. In the last few centuries BCE, Italians were starting to adopt them for purposes like milling grain. The famous rotary querns from Pompeii were a new and high-tech way of making your flour. It is only in the past few decades that it became clear when and where rotating millstones were invented. Sim and Kaminski know some of this history because they cite L. Sprague de Camp’s 1963 The Ancient Engineers. However, they don’t notice that if cranks were a new technology, its unlikely that they were immediately applied to milling. Europeans had been using cranked grindstones for at least 700 years before they started to use cranked roller mills for metalworking. That suggests that adapting the crank mechanism to metalworking is not an obvious next step. And central Italy in the third and second century BCE was not a center of mechanical and metallurgical innovation, but a place which was dazzled by Celtic swords and Hellenistic devices like the Antikythera mechanism. Slaves from the east seem to have replaced Italy’s native textile traditions by the end of the Republic because they were cheap and clever and it was easier to let them do what they knew how to do than retrain them.
There were a few ares where Imperial Roman technology was similar to 16th-18th century Europe, such as the size of ships and the availability of iron. Celts and Romans did use a lot of thin iron, bronze, silver, and brass sheet, and making such sheet by hand and then smoothing it out is time-consuming and wasteful. The shield from Dürrnberg grave 373 had many iron reinforcements just 0.15-0.20 mm thick after corrosion.2 I am open to the possibility that trip-hammers or stamping mills were used to beat out sheet in the Roman empire, since they were used for other tasks. I might even be convinced that rolling mills were used in some places for specific purposes like making very thin brass sheet for strapends, lanterns, and scale armour. The Roman empire had large-scale production in centralized locations for distribution by sea and fairly extensive use of water power. However, I would want much more evidence to believe in roller mills in Polybius’ Italy, and I expect that if some shops had trip-hammers to bang out helmets and buckets, others just used teams of sweaty men with hammers. As late as the First World War, some firearms were made in giant factories, and others were made with hammers and files in one-room workshops in Spain.
There are lots of threads I would like to pull further, like when sheet metal in standard gauges first appeared, and my onetime teacher John Peter Oleson’s argument about whether the ships from Lake Nemi in Italy had cranks on their pumps. I never got around to finishing Panagiota Manti‘s thesis on casting ancient Greek helmets. However, I hope that this shows why I am open to the use of articulated cuirasses in Polybius’ Italy, somewhat less open to the use of trip-hammers, and quite skeptical of the use of roller mills or armourers who started with sheet metal. Ancient metalworking is an exciting topic where archaeologists, metallurgists, and makers can work together, but its hard to keep up with.
Unlike ancient metalworkers, I am not secretive about my methods! But unlike many ancient writers I am not independently wealthy. If you can, please support this site.
Further Reading
Michael Fulford, David Sim, Alistair Doig, “The production of Roman ferrous armour: a metallographic survey of material from Britain, Denmark and Germany, and its implications,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, Volume 17 (2004) pp. 197-220
(scheduled 6 April 2026)
1. https://www.rps.ac.uk/mss/1318/29 I will discuss and translate this in my second article on linen armour for Medieval Clothing & Textiles ↩︎
2. https://doi.org/10.11588/jrgzm.2009.1.16569 I don’t yet have a Zotero plugin in this browser to paste bibliographic details, but you can find them in “Plywood shields in European history,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 23/24 (2022/23) pp. 9-23 ↩︎
#ancient #armour #bonusPost #LSpragueDeCamp #methodology #response
#ancient #armour #bonuspost #lspraguedecamp #methodology #response
Sean @[email protected] · 2026-04-06 · 21:00 UTC
On Trip-Hammers and Rolling Mills
The breastplate of an armour from Campania in southern Italy around 300 BCE. Originally it would have been mached with a backplate, bronze belt,greaves, and probaably reinforcements for the straps over the shoulders and under the armpits. Leeds, British Museum, object Object number II.197 b
Over on his site Bret Devereaux has a good description of a problem in Roman Military Equipment Studies. In book 6 of his histories, Polybius says that most Roman infantry wear a plate of bronze a span broad called a kardiophylax “heart-protector” on their breast, except for the wealthy who wear coats of mail. No such plate survives from a Roman site after 300 BCE, and no sculpture or painting shows it. As Roman rule expands across Italy, locals stop building tombs with detailed paintings full of arms and armour, and body armour tends to be a rare find. By the fifth century BCE, Samnites and Campanians had replaced simple disc breastplates with more complex arrangements of a breastplate, a backplate, a bronze belt and armoured straps over the shoulders and under the arms. We therefore have to assume that Romans either reverted to a style of armour from several hundred years before, or that Polybius’ description just mentions one-part of a seven-part armour. To my knowledge, no other surviving writer says that Romans wore such a breastplate, and there are no carvings or paintings which show Romans wearing them (Varro’s pectorale was made of strips of leather, De Lingua Latina 5.24). Both interpretations match objects from the ancient Mediterrean, and both match later armour from other cultures such as the “good iron for his body” worn by Robert the Bruce’s militia in 13181 and char-aina “four mirrors” armour in the Persianate world. I am doubtful that most Romans could afford not only a helmet, a sword, and and iron-bound shield but most of a bronze breastplate, but Devereaux is more confident. There are a lot of things to think about here, such as why the Roman Republic, a relatively egalitarian society, did not leave much art which showed ordinary soldiers. However, this week I will write down my thoughts about one technical question which I took the time to work through.
A Samnite bronze belt. These covered the waist below the bottom of a short disc breastplate. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1991.171.50
I think that if you wanted to make a bronze breastplate in the ancient world, you took an ingot and hammered it thin (possibly starting by melting it and pouring it onto a broad flat stone). You need to stop frequently, heat, and cool in air or quench in water to anneal it so it does not get too hard and brittle and crack. Devereaux thinks that they were “probably produced from sheet metal (sheet bronze, in particular), rather than forged from an ingot.” In a comment he referred me to David Sim in the UK.
I don’t own Sim’s book Iron for the Eagles but I do own Roman Imperial Armour (Oxbow Books, 2012) by David Sim and J. Kaminski which presents Sim’s theory (and Sim’s article in Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2003/4). Sim’s argument seems to take the following form (pp. 49-57): some armour from the Roman empire has smooth, parallel surfaces and consistent thickness. I don’t know any way to do this by hand or with powered up-and-down motion, but I can do it with a pair of rollers turned by hand and an assistant feeding metal between them. Such rollers would likely have been recycled when no longer needed and mounted in wooden machines, therefore would have left no archaeological evidence.
I don’t know how common the iron or copper-alloy sheet with smooth, parallel surfaces actually is. Table 7 of the book shows that one part of a Roman armour or shield usually varies in thickness across its surface by a factor or 2 or 3 which is typical of low-tech armour. The main examples of smooth parallel surfaces seem to be scale armour and layers within a sheet of iron or steel, and the paper on that steel notes that the same could probably be achieved with a trip-hammer (Fulford, Sim, and Doig 2004: 201). A trip-hammer is a long hammer on a pivot, whose long end comes close to a turning shaft driven by water or a motor. Pegs on the shaft lift the hammer and cause it to strike an anvil in a steady rhythm with more than human force, so the operator just has to focus on positioning the work.
Cross-section of a Roman shield boss from Newstead. Sim sees this as metal which was probably created by hammering with a trip-hammer or rolling in a mill because some layers within the iron are smooth (but look at the bottom layer with its bump towards the left). After Figure 12.5 from Fulford, Sim and Doig 2004
Whereas trip-hammers were widely used in the Roman empire, late medieval Europe, and China, roller mills for sheet metal only appear in Europe in the 18th century, and mills for making bar iron into rods for nails only in the 16th century. That is almost 2000 years later than Polybius. Forming two cylinders and mounting them parallel to one another with handmade tools is harder than it looks, and making an adjustable mill that can produce more than one thickness is even harder. It was hard to justify specialized machines before the 20th century, because labour was cheap and markets were unstable. You could not rely on making one specialized thing for a distant market, because one day the seas would be closed by pirates or the road over the mountains would be shut to keep the plague out. If you wanted to keep in business, you needed to produce a variety of goods, or simple and versatile goods like nails. Copper alloys were traded in ingots, and iron was traded in bars, because skilled metalworkers could make anything you wanted from the raw material. If you bought specialized pre-made forms, you might find that there was no market for finishing them.
To make a breastplate, you do not want sheet metal of uniform thickness. You will want the front and center to be thicker and stronger, and the sides to be thinner, because you are most concerned with being stabbed or shot through the vital organs by someone in front of you. As you stretch the metal to fit around your body, it will get thicker in some places and thinner in others, and if you have time to take care you will put the thick metal in the middle and thin near the edges. Nobody but you and your servant will ever see the inside, so it does not matter if the inside is lumpy and oxidized as long as the outside is smooth and beautiful. So there would be no benefit to using rollers, as there would be for making 0.3 mm stock for scale armour and applied decorations.
Sim’s approach in Roman Imperial Armour seems quite a contemporary one, with a focus on specialized labour-saving machines, uniform properties and dimensions. Moving between contemporary and traditional approaches often takes some adjusting, as when I volunteer on carpentry projects with no wood-to-wood joinery and everything butted and nailed together and my inner fourteenth-century person has to take a lie down and drink some ale. Reenactor Matthew Amt has some disagreements with how Sim makes pilum heads and spearheads, and a specialist in reproducing ancient metalwork did not like the book:
Roman Imperial Armour: The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour overreaches in basing so many of its assertions on the limited experience of a hobbyist blacksmith. It would be presumptuous for a metal-detectorist to write a treatise on archaeological practice, but for some reason academics think that any experience at all qualifies them to extrapolate on ancient craft industries.
no citation because this was from a private forum discussion! Ask me in person if you want to know who said this.
Iron for the Eagles has a very good reputation and I hope to read it one day.
Also, a roller mill is a crank-based mechanism. Cranks were probably invented in Iberia around the fifth century BCE. In the last few centuries BCE, Italians were starting to adopt them for purposes like milling grain. The famous rotary querns from Pompeii were a new and high-tech way of making your flour. It is only in the past few decades that it became clear when and where rotating millstones were invented. Sim and Kaminski know some of this history because they cite L. Sprague de Camp’s 1963 The Ancient Engineers. However, they don’t notice that if cranks were a new technology, its unlikely that they were immediately applied to milling. Europeans had been using cranked grindstones for at least 700 years before they started to use cranked roller mills for metalworking. That suggests that adapting the crank mechanism to metalworking is not an obvious next step. And central Italy in the third and second century BCE was not a center of mechanical and metallurgical innovation, but a place which was dazzled by Celtic swords and Hellenistic devices like the Antikythera mechanism. Slaves from the east seem to have replaced Italy’s native textile traditions by the end of the Republic because they were cheap and clever and it was easier to let them do what they knew how to do than retrain them.
There were a few ares where Imperial Roman technology was similar to 16th-18th century Europe, such as the size of ships and the availability of iron. Celts and Romans did use a lot of thin iron, bronze, silver, and brass sheet, and making such sheet by hand and then smoothing it out is time-consuming and wasteful. The shield from Dürrnberg grave 373 had many iron reinforcements just 0.15-0.20 mm thick after corrosion.2 I am open to the possibility that trip-hammers or stamping mills were used to beat out sheet in the Roman empire, since they were used for other tasks. I might even be convinced that rolling mills were used in some places for specific purposes like making very thin brass sheet for strapends, lanterns, and scale armour. The Roman empire had large-scale production in centralized locations for distribution by sea and fairly extensive use of water power. However, I would want much more evidence to believe in roller mills in Polybius’ Italy, and I expect that if some shops had trip-hammers to bang out helmets and buckets, others just used teams of sweaty men with hammers. As late as the First World War, some firearms were made in giant factories, and others were made with hammers and files in one-room workshops in Spain.
There are lots of threads I would like to pull further, like when sheet metal in standard gauges first appeared, and my onetime teacher John Peter Oleson’s argument about whether the ships from Lake Nemi in Italy had cranks on their pumps. I never got around to finishing Panagiota Manti‘s thesis on casting ancient Greek helmets. However, I hope that this shows why I am open to the use of articulated cuirasses in Polybius’ Italy, somewhat less open to the use of trip-hammers, and quite skeptical of the use of roller mills or armourers who started with sheet metal. Ancient metalworking is an exciting topic where archaeologists, metallurgists, and makers can work together, but its hard to keep up with.
Unlike ancient metalworkers, I am not secretive about my methods! But unlike many ancient writers I am not independently wealthy. If you can, please support this site.
Further Reading
Michael Fulford, David Sim, Alistair Doig, “The production of Roman ferrous armour: a metallographic survey of material from Britain, Denmark and Germany, and its implications,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, Volume 17 (2004) pp. 197-220
(scheduled 6 April 2026)
1. https://www.rps.ac.uk/mss/1318/29 I will discuss and translate this in my second article on linen armour for Medieval Clothing & Textiles ↩︎
2. https://doi.org/10.11588/jrgzm.2009.1.16569 I don’t yet have a Zotero plugin in this browser to paste bibliographic details, but you can find them in “Plywood shields in European history,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 23/24 (2022/23) pp. 9-23 ↩︎
#ancient #armour #bonusPost #LSpragueDeCamp #methodology #response
#response #methodology #lspraguedecamp #bonuspost #armour #ancient
Sean @[email protected] · 2026-04-06 · 21:00 UTC
On Trip-Hammers and Rolling Mills
The breastplate of an armour from Campania in southern Italy around 300 BCE. Originally it would have been mached with a backplate, bronze belt,greaves, and probaably reinforcements for the straps over the shoulders and under the armpits. Leeds, Royal Armouries, Object number II.197 b
Over on his site Bret Devereaux has a good description of a problem in Roman Military Equipment Studies. In book 6 of his histories, Polybius says that most Roman infantry wear a plate of bronze a span broad called a kardiophylax “heart-protector” on their breast, except for the wealthy who wear coats of mail. No such plate survives from a Roman site after 300 BCE, and no sculpture or painting shows it. As Roman rule expands across Italy, locals stop building tombs with detailed paintings full of arms and armour, and body armour tends to be a rare find. By the fifth century BCE, Samnites and Campanians had replaced simple disc breastplates with more complex arrangements of a breastplate, a backplate, a bronze belt and armoured straps over the shoulders and under the arms. We therefore have to assume that Romans either reverted to a style of armour from several hundred years before, or that Polybius’ description just mentions one-part of a seven-part armour. To my knowledge, no other surviving writer says that Romans wore such a breastplate, and there are no carvings or paintings which show Romans wearing them (Varro’s pectorale was made of strips of leather, De Lingua Latina 5.24). Both interpretations match objects from the ancient Mediterrean, and both match later armour from other cultures such as the “good iron for his body” worn by Robert the Bruce’s militia in 13181 and char-aina “four mirrors” armour in the Persianate world. I am doubtful that most Romans could afford not only a helmet, a sword, and and iron-bound shield but most of a bronze breastplate, but Devereaux is more confident. There are a lot of things to think about here, such as why the Roman Republic, a relatively egalitarian society, did not leave much art which showed ordinary soldiers. However, this week I will write down my thoughts about one technical question which I took the time to work through.
A Samnite bronze belt. These covered the waist below the bottom of a short disc breastplate. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, object 1991.171.50
I think that if you wanted to make a bronze breastplate in the ancient world, you took an ingot and hammered it thin (possibly starting by melting it and pouring it onto a broad flat stone). You need to stop frequently, heat, and cool in air or quench in water to anneal it so it does not get too hard and brittle and crack. Devereaux thinks that they were “probably produced from sheet metal (sheet bronze, in particular), rather than forged from an ingot.” In a comment he referred me to David Sim in the UK.
I don’t own Sim’s book Iron for the Eagles but I do own Roman Imperial Armour (Oxbow Books, 2012) by David Sim and J. Kaminski which presents Sim’s theory (and Sim’s article in Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 2003/4). Sim’s argument seems to take the following form (pp. 49-57): some armour from the Roman empire has smooth, parallel surfaces and consistent thickness. I don’t know any way to do this by hand or with powered up-and-down motion, but I can do it with a pair of rollers turned by hand and an assistant feeding metal between them. Such rollers would likely have been recycled when no longer needed and mounted in wooden machines, therefore would have left no archaeological evidence.
I don’t know how common the iron or copper-alloy sheet with smooth, parallel surfaces actually is. Table 7 of the book shows that one part of a Roman armour or shield usually varies in thickness across its surface by a factor or 2 or 3 which is typical of low-tech armour. The main examples of smooth parallel surfaces seem to be scale armour and layers within a sheet of iron or steel, and the paper on that steel notes that the same could probably be achieved with a trip-hammer (Fulford, Sim, and Doig 2004: 201). A trip-hammer is a long hammer on a pivot, whose long end comes close to a turning shaft driven by water or a motor. Pegs on the shaft lift the hammer and cause it to strike an anvil in a steady rhythm with more than human force, so the operator just has to focus on positioning the work.
Cross-section of a Roman shield boss from Newstead. Sim sees this as metal which was probably created by hammering with a trip-hammer or rolling in a mill because some layers within the iron are smooth (but look at the bottom layer with its bump towards the left). After Figure 12.5 from Fulford, Sim and Doig 2004
Whereas trip-hammers were widely used in the Roman empire, late medieval Europe, and China, roller mills for sheet metal only appear in Europe in the 18th century, and mills for making bar iron into rods for nails only in the 16th century. That is almost 2000 years later than Polybius. Forming two cylinders and mounting them parallel to one another with handmade tools is harder than it looks, and making an adjustable mill that can produce more than one thickness is even harder. It was hard to justify specialized machines before the 20th century, because labour was cheap and markets were unstable. You could not rely on making one specialized thing for a distant market, because one day the seas would be closed by pirates or the road over the mountains would be shut to keep the plague out. If you wanted to keep in business, you needed to produce a variety of goods, or simple and versatile goods like nails. Copper alloys were traded in ingots, and iron was traded in bars, because skilled metalworkers could make anything you wanted from the raw material. If you bought specialized pre-made forms, you might find that there was no market for finishing them.
To make a breastplate, you do not want sheet metal of uniform thickness. You will want the front and center to be thicker and stronger, and the sides to be thinner, because you are most concerned with being stabbed or shot through the vital organs by someone in front of you. As you stretch the metal to fit around your body, it will get thicker in some places and thinner in others, and if you have time to take care you will put the thick metal in the middle and thin near the edges. Nobody but you and your servant will ever see the inside, so it does not matter if the inside is lumpy and oxidized as long as the outside is smooth and beautiful. So there would be no benefit to using rollers, as there would be for making 0.3 mm stock for scale armour and applied decorations.
Sim’s approach in Roman Imperial Armour seems quite a contemporary one, with a focus on specialized labour-saving machines, uniform properties and dimensions. Moving between contemporary and traditional approaches often takes some adjusting, as when I volunteer on carpentry projects with no wood-to-wood joinery and everything butted and nailed together and my inner fourteenth-century person has to take a lie down and drink some ale. Reenactor Matthew Amt has some disagreements with how Sim makes pilum heads and spearheads, and a specialist in reproducing ancient metalwork did not like the book:
Roman Imperial Armour: The Production of Early Imperial Military Armour overreaches in basing so many of its assertions on the limited experience of a hobbyist blacksmith. It would be presumptuous for a metal-detectorist to write a treatise on archaeological practice, but for some reason academics think that any experience at all qualifies them to extrapolate on ancient craft industries.
no citation because this was from a private forum discussion! Ask me in person if you want to know who said this.
Iron for the Eagles has a very good reputation and I hope to read it one day.
Also, a roller mill is a crank-based mechanism. Cranks were probably invented in Iberia around the fifth century BCE. In the last few centuries BCE, Italians were starting to adopt them for purposes like milling grain. The famous rotary querns from Pompeii were a new and high-tech way of making your flour. It is only in the past few decades that it became clear when and where rotating millstones were invented. Sim and Kaminski know some of this history because they cite L. Sprague de Camp’s 1963 The Ancient Engineers. However, they don’t notice that if cranks were a new technology, its unlikely that they were immediately applied to milling. Europeans had been using cranked grindstones for at least 700 years before they started to use cranked roller mills for metalworking. That suggests that adapting the crank mechanism to metalworking is not an obvious next step. And central Italy in the third and second century BCE was not a center of mechanical and metallurgical innovation, but a place which was dazzled by Celtic swords and Hellenistic devices like the Antikythera mechanism. Slaves from the east seem to have replaced Italy’s native textile traditions by the end of the Republic because they were cheap and clever and it was easier to let them do what they knew how to do than retrain them.
There were a few ares where Imperial Roman technology was similar to 16th-18th century Europe, such as the size of ships and the availability of iron. Celts and Romans did use a lot of thin iron, bronze, silver, and brass sheet, and making such sheet by hand and then smoothing it out is time-consuming and wasteful. The shield from Dürrnberg grave 373 had many iron reinforcements just 0.15-0.20 mm thick after corrosion.2 I am open to the possibility that trip-hammers or stamping mills were used to beat out sheet in the Roman empire, since they were used for other tasks. I might even be convinced that rolling mills were used in some places for specific purposes like making very thin brass sheet for strapends, lanterns, and scale armour. The Roman empire had large-scale production in centralized locations for distribution by sea and fairly extensive use of water power. However, I would want much more evidence to believe in roller mills in Polybius’ Italy, and I expect that if some shops had trip-hammers to bang out helmets and buckets, others just used teams of sweaty men with hammers. As late as the First World War, some firearms were made in giant factories, and others were made with hammers and files in one-room workshops in Spain.
There are lots of threads I would like to pull further, like when sheet metal in standard gauges first appeared, and my onetime teacher John Peter Oleson’s argument about whether the ships from Lake Nemi in Italy had cranks on their pumps (in 1984, he thought the cranks were “archaeologically a fantasy” based on misinterpreting fragments of wood). I never got around to finishing Panagiota Manti‘s thesis on casting ancient Greek helmets. However, I hope that this shows why I am open to the use of articulated cuirasses in Polybius’ Italy, somewhat less open to the use of trip-hammers, and quite skeptical of the use of roller mills or armourers who started with sheet metal. Ancient metalworking is an exciting topic where archaeologists, metallurgists, and makers can work together, but its hard to keep up with.
Unlike ancient metalworkers, I am not secretive about my methods! But unlike many ancient writers I am not independently wealthy. If you can, please support this site.
Further Reading
Michael Fulford, David Sim, Alistair Doig, “The production of Roman ferrous armour: a metallographic survey of material from Britain, Denmark and Germany, and its implications,” Journal of Roman Archaeology, Volume 17 (2004) pp. 197-220
(scheduled 6 April 2026)
Edit 2026-04-06: first photo is in the wrong museum! Had a quick look at the book by Oleson.
1. https://www.rps.ac.uk/mss/1318/29 I will discuss and translate this in my second article on linen armour for Medieval Clothing & Textiles ↩︎
2. https://doi.org/10.11588/jrgzm.2009.1.16569 I don’t yet have a Zotero plugin in this browser to paste bibliographic details, but you can find them in “Plywood shields in European history,” Journal of Roman Military Equipment Studies 23/24 (2022/23) pp. 9-23 ↩︎
#ancient #armour #bonusPost #LSpragueDeCamp #methodology #response
#ancient #armour #bonuspost #lspraguedecamp #methodology #response
Derek Hollingsworth @[email protected] · 2026-05-11 · 09:37 UTC

Our beautiful Irish language is more consistent than English because it has borrowed less from other languages than English - which is like a magpie!
Irish has been influenced by other languages, including Latin, Old Norse, Norman French, and English.
The Irish word 'Bád' (boat in English) has its origin in the Norse word 'Bátr'.
Focail Gaelach as Lochlainnis ó dhúcas: bád. Is teanga álainn í an Ghaeilge ach bhí tionchair inti ó theangacha eile.
#gaeilge #Irishlanguage #irish #irishculture

#gaeilge #irishlanguage #irish #irishculture
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-27 · 15:42 UTC

Stuck in the Filter: August 2025’s Angry Misses
By Kenstrosity
The heat persists, but now the humidity comes in full force as storm systems wreak havoc upon the coasts. I hide in my cramped closet of an office, lest I be washed out once again by an unsuspecting deluge. However, I still send my minions out into the facility, bound by duty to search for those metallic scraps on which we feast.
Fortuitously, most all of those imps I sent out came back alive, and with wares! BEHOLD!

Kenstrosity’s Galactic Gremlin
Silent Millenia // Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil [August 26th, 2025 – Self-Release]
Have you ever seen such a delightfully cheesy cover? Probably, but it’s been a while for me. I bought Celestial Twilight: Beyond the Crimson Veil, the second raw symphonic black metal opus from Finnish one-man act Silent Millenia, on the strength of the artwork alone. Little did I know that what lay beyond this crimson veil was some of the most fun melodic black metal this side of Moonlight Sorcery. The same low-fi roughness that personifies Old Nick’s work grounds Silent Millenia’s starbound songwriting as it traverses the universe with an energetic punch reminiscent of Emperor or Stormkeep (“Awaken the Celestial Spell,” “Daemonic Mastery”). To help differentiate Silent Millenia’s sound from that of their peers, a gothic atmosphere ensorcells much of this material to great effect, merging eerie Victorian melodies with galactic adventurism in an unlikely pair (“Enthrone the Spectral”). Swirling synths and sparkling twinkles abound as well, creating blissful moments of interest as frosty tremolos and piercing blasts take full advantage of the false sense of security those entrancing clouds of synthetic instrumentation create (“Benighted Path to Darkness Mysterium,” “Reign in Cosmic Majesty”). Simply put, Celestial Twilight is an unexpected gem of a symphonic black metal record, bursting with killer ideas and infinite levels of raw, unabashed fun. You should hear it!

Kronos’ Unexpected Unearthments
Street Sects // Dry Drunk [August 15th, 2025 – Self Release]
Dry Drunk sticks to your inner surfaces, draining down like cigarette tar along paralyzed cilia to pool in your lungs until the cells themselves foment rebellion. Once it’s in you, you feel paranoid, wretched, and alone. So it’s the proper follow-up to Street Sects’ visionary debut, End Position. Like that record, Dry Drunk plumbs the most mundane and unsavory gutters of America for a cast of protagonists that it dwells in or dispatches with a mixture of pity and disgust, with vocalist Leo Ashline narrating their violent crimes and self-hatred in a mixture of croons, shrieks, and snarls that cook the air before the speakers into the scent of booze and rotten teeth. And like that record, Shaun Ringsmuth (Glassing) dresses the sets with a fractal litter of snaps, squeals, crashes, gunshots, and grinding electronics, caked in tar and collapsing just as soon as it is swept into a structure. And like End Position, Dry Drunk is a masterpiece. The impeccable six-song stretch from “Love Makes You Fat” through “Riding the Clock” ties you to the bumper and drags you along some of the duo’s most creative side-roads, through the simmering, straightjacketed sludge of “Baker Act” to the chopped-up, smirking electronica of “Eject Button.” Swerving between addled, unintelligible agony and unforgettable anthems, Dry Drunk, like End Position before it is nothing less than the life of a junkie scraped together, heated on a spoon, and injected into your head. Once you’ve taken a hit, you will never be quite the same.

Thus Spoke’s Frightening Fragments
Defacement // Doomed [August 22nd, 2025 – Self Release]
There’s music for every vibe.1 The one Defacement fits is an exclusively extreme metal flavor of moody that is only appreciable by genre fans, made tangibly more eerie by their persistent idiosyncratic use of dark ambient interludes amidst the viciously distorted blackened death. Audiences—and reviewers—tend to disparage these electronic segments, but I’ve always felt their crackling presence increases the analog horror of it all, and rather than being a breather from the intensity, they prolong the nausea, the sense of emptiness, and the abject fearfulness of head-based trauma. This latter concept grows more metaphorical still on Doomed, where the violence is inside the mind, purpose-erasing, and emotionally-detaching. The ambience might be the most sadly beautiful so far (“Mournful,” and “Clouded” especially), and the transitions into nightmarish heaviness arguably the most fluid. And the metal is undoubtedly the most ambitious, dynamic, and magnificent of Defacement’s career, combining their most gruesome dissonance (“Portrait”) with their most bizarrely exuberant guitar melodies (“Unexplainable,” “Unrecognised”). Solos drip tangibly with (emotional) resonance (“Unexplainable,” “Absent”) and there’s not a breath or a moment of wasted space. Yes, the band’s heavier side can suffer from a nagging sense of homogeneous mass, but it remains transporting. While I can appreciate why others do not appreciate Defacement, this is the first of their outings I can truthfully say mesmerised me on first listen.

ClarkKent’s Heated Hymns
Phantom Fire // Phantom Fire [August 8th, 2025 – Edged Circle Productions]
While I waded through the murky depths of the August promo sump, Steel implored me to take the eponymous third album from Phantom Fire. “The AMG commentariat love blackened heavy metal,” he said. I disregarded his advice at my peril, and while I ended up enjoying what I grabbed, it turns out this would have been solid too. Featuring members from Enslaved, Kraków. Hellbutcher, and Aeternus, Phantom Fire play old school speed metal that harks back to the likes of Motörhead and Iron Maiden’s Killers. Thanks to healthy doses of bass and production values that allow the instruments to shine, each song is infused with energetic grooves. The music sounds fresh, crisp, and clear, from the booming drums to Eld’s “blackened” snarls. Early tracks “Eternal Void” and “All For None” show off the catchy blend of simple guitar riffs and a hoppin’ bass accompanied by energetic kit work. While placing a somewhat lengthy instrumental track in the middle of a record usually slows it down, “Fatal Attraction” turns out to be a highlight. It tells a tragic love story involving a motorcycle with nothing but instruments, an engine revving, and some police sirens. The second half of Phantom Fire gets a bit on the weirder side, turning to some stoner and psychedelia. There’s a push and pull between the stoner and Motörhead speed stuff on songs like “Malphas” and “Submersible Pt. 2,” and this blend actually works pretty well. It turns out that they aren’t phantom after all—these guys are truly fire.
Burning Witches // Inquisition [August 22nd, 2025 – Napalm Records]
With six albums in eight years, Swiss quintet Burning Witches has really been burning rubber. While such prolific output in such a short time frame generally spells trouble, Inquisition is a solid piece of heavy/power metal. Burning Witches dabbles in a mix of speedy power metal and mid-tempo heavy metal, often sounding like ’80s stalwarts Judas Priest and Def Leppard. With Laura Guldemond’s gruff voice, they produce a more weighty, less happy version of power metal than the likes of Fellowship or Frozen Crown. While the songs stick to formulaic structures, tempo shifts from song to song help keep things from growing stale. We see this variety right from the get-go, where “Soul Eater” takes a high-energy approach before moving into the more mellow “Shame.” There’s even a pretty solid ballad, “Release Me,” that grounds the back half of the record. Songs of the sort that Burning Witches write need catchy choruses, and fortunately, they deliver. “High Priestess of the Night” is a particular standout, delivering a knock-out punch in its delivery. It helps that the instrumental parts are well-executed, from crunchy riffs to subdued solos to booming blast beats. Anyone looking for a solid bit of power metal that’s not too heavy on the cheese will find this worth a listen.
Deathhammer // Crimson Dawn [August 29th, 2025 – Hells Headbangers Records]
Celebrating 20 years of blackened speed, Deathhammer drop LP number six with the kind of energy that exhausted parents dread to see in their children at bedtime. This is my first foray with the band, and I am in awe of the relentless level of manic energy they keep throughout Crimson Dawn’s 39 minutes. If science could learn how to harness their energy, we’d have an endless source of renewables. The two-piece out of Norway channels classic Slayer on crack and even has moments reminiscent of Painkiller-era Judas Priest. They play non-stop thrash cranked to 11, with persistent blast beats and some dual guitar parts that leave your head spinning from the rapid-fire directions the riffs fire off in. The heart of the mania is singer Sergeant Salsten. His crazed vocals are amazing—snarling, shouting, and shrieking in a way that took me back to the manic pitch Judge Doom could reach in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? He sings so fast that on the chorus of “Crimson Dawn,” it sounds like he says “Griffindor,” which had me searching confusedly for the Harry Potter tag. This was probably my favorite song, not just because of the Griffindor thing, but because that chorus is so catchy. Either way, it’s tough to pick a standout track because they all grip you by the throat and don’t let go. Crimson Dawn is a ton of fun and a must listen if you like your music fast.

Grin Reaper’s Bountiful Blight
Kallias // Digital Plague [August 14th, 2025 – Self Release]
Machine gun drumming, spacey synths, Morbid Angel-meets-Meshuggah riffing, Turian-esque barking and Voyager-reminiscent vocal melodies…what the fuck is going on here? The only thing more surprising than someone having the moxie to blend all these things together is how well they work in concert. Kallias doesn’t hold back on sophomore album Digital Plague, and the result is a rocket-fueled blast through forty-four minutes of eclectic, addictive prog. The mishmash of styles keeps the album fresh and unpredictable while never dipping its toes in inconsistent waters, and staccato rhythms propel listeners through eight tracks without losing steam. As with any prog metal worth its salt, Kallias brandishes technical prowess, and their cohesion belies the relatively short time they’ve been putting out music.2 The mix is well-suited to spotlight whoever needs it at a given time, whether the bass is purring (“Exogíini Kyriarchía”), the drums are being annihilated (“Pyrrhic Victory”), or a guitar solo nears Pettrucian wankery (“Phenomenal in Theory”). The end result is three-quarters of an hour filled with myriad influences that fuse into a sound all Kallias’s own, and it’s one I’ve returned to several times since discovering (also, credit to MontDoom for his stunning artwork, which helped initially draw my attention). Check it out—you’ll be sick if you avoid this one like the Plague.

Luke’s Kaleidoscopic Kicks
Giant Haze // Cosmic Mother [August 22nd, 2025 – Tonzonen Records]
Whereas many of my colleagues are bracing themselves for cooler conditions and harsh winters to come, in my neck of the woods, things are warming up. While my own wintry August filter proved scarce, there was one particular summery gem to lift moods with burly riffs and fat stoner grooves. Unheralded German act Giant Haze seemingly emerged out of nowhere during a random Bandcamp deep dive. Debut LP Cosmic Mother channels the good old days of ’90s-inspired desert rock, featuring grungy, doomy vibes via a groovy batch of riff-centric, hard-rocking and uplifting jams, evoking the nostalgic spirit of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Clutch and perhaps even a dash of Danzig. Punching out raucous, groove-soaked hard rockers with skyscraping hooks (“Geographic Gardens Suck,” “King of Tomorrow,” “Panic to Ride”), summery, funk–psych jams (“Sunrise”), and bluesy, punk-infused fireballs (“Crank in Public,” “Shrink Age”) Giant Haze get a lot of things right on this assured debut. The songwriting is deceptively diverse and punchy, bolstered by solid production, tight musicianship, and the swaggering, ever so slightly goofy vocal charms and powerful hooks of frontman Christoph Wollmann. Inevitably, a few rough spots appear, but overall Cosmic Mother showcases oodles of budding potential, an impactful delivery, cheeky sense of humor, and infectious, feel-good songcraft.

Spicie Forrest’s Foraged Fruit
Bask // The Turning [August 22nd, 2025 – Season of Mist]
Last seen in 2019, Bask returns with fourth LP, The Turning, a concept album following The Rider as she and The Traveler traverse the stars. They still peddle the unique blend of stoner rock and Americana Kenstrosity reviewed favorably in 2019, but 2025 sees them looking up for inspiration. The Turning incorporates a distinct cosmic bent (“The Traveler,” “The Turning”) and post-rock structures (“Dig My Heels,” “Unwound”). These augmentations to Bask’s core sound are enhanced by the masterful pedal steel of new official member Jed Willis. Whether floating through the firmament or tilling earthly pastures, Willis creates textures both fresh and intensely nostalgic. The infinite shifting vistas of The Turning’s front half coalesce into singular timeless visions on the back half, supporting its conceptual nature in both content and form. Like a combination of Huntsmen and Somali Yacht Club, Bask weaves riffs and melodies heard across the plains and through the void above with an unguarded authenticity felt in your soul.

Dolphin Whisperer’s Disseminating Discharge
Plasmodulated // An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell [August 1st, 2025 – Personal Records]
Stinky, sticky, slimy—all adjectives that define the ideal death metal platter. Myk Colby has been trying to chase this perfect balance in a reverb-wonky package with projects like the d-beaten Hot Graves and extra hazy Wharflurch, but vile death metal balance is hard to achieve. However, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell contains a recklessly pinched Demilichian riffage, classic piercing whammy bombs, and spook-minded synth ambience that places Plasmodulated with an odor more pungent than its peers. With an infected ear that festers equally with doom-loaded, Incantation-indebted drags (“Gelatinous Mutation ov Brewed Origin,” “Trapped in the Plasmovoid”) and Voivod-on-jenkem cutaways to foul-throated extravagence (“The Final Fuckening”). An air of intelligent tempo design keeps An Ocean from never feeling trapped in a maze of its own fumes, with Colby’s lush and bubbling synth design seguing tumbles into hammering deathly tremolo runs (“Such Rapid Sphacelation”) and Celtic Frosted riff tumbles (“Drowning in Sputum”) alike, all before swirling about his own tattered, trailing vocal sputters. Steady but slippery, elegant yet effluvial, An Ocean ov Putrid, Stinky, Vile, Disgusting Hell provides the necessary noxious pressure to corrode death metal-loving denizens into pure gloops of stained-denim pit worship. Delivered as labeled, Plasmodulated earns its hazardous declaration. We here at AMG are not liable for any OSHA violations that occur as a result of Plasmodulated consumption on the job, though.
#2025 #Aeternus #AmericanMetal #Americana #AnOceanOvPutridStinkyVileDisgustingHell #Aug25 #Bask #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #BurningWitches #CelestialTwilightBeyondTheCrimsonVeil #CelticFrost #Clutch #CosmicMother #CrimsonDawn #Danzig #DarkAmbient #DeathMetal #Deathhammer #DefLeppard #Defacement #Demilich #DigitalPlague #Doomed #DryDrunk #DutchMetal #EdgedCircleProductions #Emperor #Enslaved #Fellship #FinnishMetal #FrozenCrown #FuManchu #GermanMetal #GiantHaze #Glassing #Hardcore #HeavyMetal #Hellbutcher #HellsHeadbangersRecords #HotGraves #Huntsmen #Incantation #Inquisition #IronMaiden #JudasPriest #Kallias #Kraków #Kyuss #MelodicBlackMetal #Meshuggah #MoonlightSorcery #MorbidAngel #Motörhead #NapalmRecords #NorwegianMetal #OldNick #PersonalRecords #PhantomFire #Plasmodulated #PowerMetal #ProgressiveDeathMetal #RawBlackMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfRelease #SilentMillenia #Slayer #Sludge #SludgeMetal #SomaliYachtClub #SpeedMetal #StonerRock #Stormkeep #StreetSects #StuckInTheFilter #StuckInTheFilter2025 #SwissMetal #SymphonicBlackMetal #TechnicalDeathMetal #TheTurning #TonzonenRecords #Turian #Voivod #Voyager #Wharflurch

#aeternus #americanmetal #americana #anoceanovputridstinkyviledisgustinghell #aug25 #bask
Soatok @[email protected] · 2020-08-27 · 11:57 UTC
If you’re ever tasked with implementing a cryptography feature–whether a high-level protocol or a low-level primitive–you will have to take special care to ensure you’re not leaking secret information through side-channels.
The descriptions of algorithms you learn in a classroom or textbook are not sufficient for real-world use. (Yes, that means your toy RSA implementation based on GMP from your computer science 101 class isn’t production-ready. Don’t deploy it.)
But what are these elusive side-channels exactly, and how do you prevent them? And in cases where you cannot prevent them, how can you mitigate the risk to your users?
Art by Swizz.
Contents
- Cryptographic Side-Channels
  Timing Leaks
  Power Usage
  Electromagnetic Emissions
- Side-Channel Prevention and Mitigation
  Prevention vs. Mitigation
  What is Constant-Time?
  Malicious Environments and Algorithmic Constant-Time
  Mitigation with Blinding Techniques
- Design Patterns for Algorithmic Constant-Time Code
  Constant-Time String Comparison
  Alternative: “Double HMAC” String Comparison
  Constant-Time Conditional Select
  Constant-Time String Inequality Comparison
  Constant-Time Integer Multiplication
  Constant-Time Integer Division
  Constant-Time Modular Inversion
  Constant-Time Null-Byte Trimming
- Further Reading and Online Resources
- Errata
Cryptographic Side-Channels
The concept of a side-channel isn’t inherently cryptographic, as Taylor Hornby demonstrates, but a side-channel can be a game over vulnerability in a system meant to maintain confidentiality (even if only for its cryptography keys).
Cryptographic side-channels allow an attacker to learn secret data from your cryptography system. To accomplish this, the attacker doesn’t necessarily study the system’s output (i.e. ciphertext); instead, they observe some other measurement, such as how much time or power was spent performing an operation, or what kind of electromagnetic radiation was emitted.
Important: While being resistant to side-channels is a prerequisite for implementations to be secure, it isn’t in and of itself sufficient for security. The underlying design of the primitives, constructions, and high-level protocols needs to be secure first, and that requires a clear and specific threat model for what you’re building.
Constant-time ECDSA doesn’t help you if you reuse k-values like it’s going out of style, but variable-time ECDSA still leaks your secret key to anyone who cares to probe your response times. Secure cryptography is very demanding.
Art by Riley.
Timing Leaks
Timing side-channels leak secrets through how much time it takes for an operation to complete.
There are many different flavors of timing leakage, including:
- Fast-failing comparison functions (memcmp() in C)
- Cache-timing vulnerabilities (e.g. software AES)
- Memory access patterns
- Conditional branches controlled by secrets
The bad news about timing leaks is that they’re almost always visible to an attacker over the network (including over the Internet (PDF)).
The good news is that most of them can be prevented or mitigated in software.
Art by Kyume.
Power Usage
Different algorithms or processor operations may require different amounts of power.
For example, squaring a large number may take less power than multiplying two different large numbers. This observation has led to the development of power analysis attacks against RSA.
Power analysis is especially relevant for embedded systems and smart cards, which are easier to extract a meaningful signal from than your desktop computer.
Some information leakage through power usage can be prevented through careful engineering (for example: BearSSL, which uses Montgomery multiplication instead of square-and-multiply).
But that’s not always an option, so generally these risks are mitigated.
My reaction when I first learned of power leaks: WATT (Art by Swizz)
Electromagnetic Emissions

Your computer is a reliable source of electromagnetic emissions (such as radio waves). Some of these emissions may reveal information about your cryptographic secrets, especially to an attacker with physical proximity to your device.
The good news is that research into EM emission side-channels isn’t as mature as side-channels through timing leaks or power usage. The bad news is that mitigations for breakthroughs will generally require hardware (e.g. electromagnetic shielding).
Aren’t computers terrifying? (Art by Swizz)
Side-Channel Prevention and Mitigation
Now that we’ve established a rough sense of some of the types of side-channels that are possible, we can begin to identify what causes them and aspire to prevent the leaks from happening–and where we can’t, to mitigate the risk to a reasonable level.
Note: To be clear, I didn’t cover all of the types of side-channels.
Prevention vs. Mitigation
Preventing a side-channel means eliminating the conditions that allow the information leak to occur in the first place. For timing leaks, this means making all algorithms constant-time.
There are entire classes of side-channel leaks that aren’t possible or practical to mitigate in software. When you encounter one, the best you can hope to do is mitigate the risk.
Ideally, you want to make the attack more expensive to pull off than the reward an attacker will gain from it.
What is Constant-Time?
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Tanelorn Kansas anymore.
When an implementation is said to be constant-time, what we mean is that the execution time of the code is not a function of its secret inputs.
Vulnerable AES uses table look-ups to implement the S-Box. Constant-time AES is either implemented in hardware, or is bitsliced.
Malicious Environments and Algorithmic Constant-Time
One of the greatest challenges with writing constant-time code is distinguishing between algorithmic constant-time and provably constant-time. The main difference between the two is that you cannot trust your compiler (especially a JIT compiler), which may attempt to optimize your code in a way that reintroduces the side-channel you aspired to remove.
A sufficiently advanced compiler optimization is indistinguishable from an adversary.
John Regehr, possibly with apologies to Arthur C. Clarke
For compiled languages, this is a tractable but expensive problem to solve: You simply have to formally verify everything from the source code to the compiler to the silicon chips that the code will be deployed on, and then audit your supply chain to prevent malicious tampering from going undetected.
For interpreted languages (e.g. PHP and JavaScript), this formal verification strategy isn’t really an option, unless you want to formally verify the runtime that interprets scripts and prove that the operations remain constant-time on top of all the other layers of distrust.
Is this level of paranoia really worth the effort?
For our cases, anyway! (Art by Khia.)
For that reason, we’re going to assume that algorithmic constant-time is adequate for the duration of this blog post.
If your threat model prevents you from accepting this assumption, feel free to put in the extra effort yourself and tell me how it goes. After all, as a furry who writes blog posts in my spare time for fun, I don’t exactly have the budget for massive research projects in formal verification.
Mitigation with Blinding Techniques
The best mitigation for some side-channels is called blinding: Obfuscating the inputs with some random data, then deobfuscating the outputs with the same random data, such that your keys are not revealed.
Two well-known examples include RSA decryption and Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman. I’ll focus on the latter, since it’s not as widely covered in the literature (although several cryptographers I’ve talked with were somehow knowledgeable about it; I suspect gatekeeping is involved).
Blinded ECDH Key Exchange
In typical ECDH implementations, you will convert a point on a Weierstrass curve to a Jacobian coordinate system .
The exact conversion formula is (, ). The conversion almost makes intuitive sense.
Where does come from though?
Art by circuitslime
It turns out, the choice for is totally arbitrary. Libraries typically set it equal to 1 (for best performance), but you can also set it to a random number. (You cannot set it to 0, however, for obvious reasons.)
Choosing a random number means the calculations performed over Jacobian coordinates will be obscured by a randomly chosen factor (and thus, if is only used once per scalar multiplication, the bitwise signal the attackers rely on will be lost).
Blinding techniques are cool. (Art by Khia.)
I think it’s really cool how one small tweak to the runtime of an algorithm can make it significantly harder to attack.
Design Patterns for Algorithmic Constant-Time Code
Mitigation techniques are cool, but preventing side-channels is a better value-add for most software.
To that end, let’s look at some design patterns for constant-time software. Some of these are relatively common; others, not so much.
Art by Scout Pawfoot.
If you prefer TypeScript / JavaScirpt, check out Soatok’s constant-time-js library on Github / NPM.
Constant-Time String Comparison
Rather than using string comparison (== in most programming languages, memcmp() in C), you want to compare cryptographic secrets and/or calculated integrity checks with a secure compare algorithm, which looks like this:
1. Initialize a variable (let’s call it D) to zero.
2. For each byte of the two strings:
  Calculate (lefti XOR righti)
  Bitwise OR the current value of D with the result of the XOR, store the output in D
3. When the loop has concluded, D will be equal to 0 if and only if the two strings are equal.
In code form, it looks like this:
```
<?phpfunction ct_compare(string $left, string $right): bool{    $d = 0;    $length = mb_strlen($left, '8bit');    if (mb_strlen($right, '8bit') !== $length) {        return false; // Lengths differ    }    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; ++$i) {        $leftCharCode = unpack('C', $left[$i])[1];        $rightCharCode = unpack('C', $right[$i])[1];        $d |= ($leftCharCode ^ $rightCharCode);    }    return $d === 0;}
```
In this example, I’m using PHP’s unpack() function to avoid cache-timing leaks with ord() and chr(). Of course, you can simply use hash_equals() instead of writing it yourself (PHP 5.6.0+).
Alternative: “Double HMAC” String Comparison
If the previous algorithm won’t work (i.e. because you’re concerned your JIT compiler will optimize it away), there is a popular alternative to consider. It’s called “Double HMAC” because it was traditionally used with Encrypt-Then-HMAC schemes.
The algorithm looks like this:
1. Generate a random 256-bit key, K. (This can be cached between invocations, but it should be unpredictable.)
2. Calculate HMAC-SHA256(K, left).
3. Calculate HMAC-SHA256(K, right).
4. Return true if the outputs of step 2 and 3 are equal.
This is provably secure, so long as HMAC-SHA256 is a secure pseudo-random function and the key K is unknown to the attacker.
In code form, the Double HMAC compare function looks like this:
```
<?phpfunction hmac_compare(string $left, string $right): bool{    static $k = null;    if (!$k) $k = random_bytes(32);    return (        hash_hmac('sha256', $left, $k)            ===        hash_hmac('sha256', $right, $k)    );}
```
Constant-Time Conditional Select
I like to imagine a conversation between a cryptography engineer and a Zen Buddhist, that unfolds like so:
- CE: “I want to eliminate branching side-channels from my code.”
- ZB: “Then do not have branches in your code.”
And that is precisely what we intend to do with a constant-time conditional select: Eliminate branches by conditionally returning between one of two strings, without an IF statement.
Mind. Blown. (Art by Khia.)
This isn’t as tricky as it sounds. We’re going to use XOR and two’s complement to achieve this.
The algorithm looks like this:
1. Convert the selection bit (TRUE/FALSE) into a mask value (-1 for TRUE, 0 for FALSE). Bitwise, -1 looks like 111111111…1111111111, while 0 looks like 00000000…00000000.
2. Copy the right string into a buffer, call it tmp.
3. Calculate left XOR right, call it x.
4. Return (tmp XOR (x AND mask)).
Once again, in code this algorithm looks like this:
```
<?phpfunction ct_select(    bool $returnLeft,    string $left,    string $right): string {    $length = mb_strlen($left, '8bit');    if (mb_strlen($right, '8bit') !== $length) {        throw new Exception('ct_select() expects two strings of equal length');    }        // Mask byte    $mask = (-$returnLeft) & 0xff;    // X    $x = (string) ($left ^ $right);        // Output = Right XOR (X AND Mask)    $output = '';    for ($i = 0; $i < $length; $i++) {        $rightCharCode = unpack('C', $right[$i])[1];        $xCharCode = unpack('C', $x[$i])[1];        $output .= pack(            'C',            $rightCharCode ^ ($xCharCode & $mask)        );    }    return $output;}
```
You can test this code for yourself here. The function was designed to read intuitively like a ternary operator.
A Word of Caution on Cleverness
In some languages, it may seem tempting to use the bitwise trickery to swap out pointers instead of returning a new buffer. But do not fall for this Siren song.
If, instead of returning a new buffer, you just swap pointers, what you’ll end up doing is creating a timing leak through your memory access patterns. This can culminate in a timing vulnerability, but even if your data is too big to fit in a processor’s cache line (I dunno, Post-Quantum RSA keys?), there’s another risk to consider.
Virtual memory addresses are just beautiful lies. Where your data lives on the actual hardware memory is entirely up to the kernel. You can have two blobs with contiguous virtual memory addresses that live on separate memory pages, or even separate RAM chips (if you have multiple).
If you’re swapping pointers around, and they point to two different pieces of hardware, and one is slightly faster to read from than the other, you can introduce yet another timing attack through which pointer is being referenced by the processor.
It’s timing leaks all the ways down! (Art by Swizz)
If you’re swapping between X and Y before performing a calculation, where:
- X lives on RAM chip 1, which takes 3 ns to read
- Y lives on RAM chip 2, which takes 4 ns to read
…then the subsequent use of the swapped pointers reveals whether you’re operating on X or Y in the timing: It will take slightly longer to read from Y than from X.
The best way to mitigate this problem is to never design your software to have it in the first place. Don’t be clever on this one.
Constant-Time String Inequality Comparison
Sometimes you don’t just need to know if two strings are equal, you also need to know which one is larger than the other.
To accomplish this in constant-time, we need to maintain two state variables:
1. gt (initialized to 0, will be set to 1 at some point if left > right)
2. eq (initialized to 1, will be set to 0 at some point if left != right)
Endian-ness will dictate the direction our algorithm goes, but we’re going to perform two operations in each cycle:
1. gt should be bitwise ORed with (eq AND ((right – left) right shifted 8 times)
2. eq should be bitwise ANDed with ((right XOR left) – 1) right shifted 8 times
If right and left are ever different, eq will be set to 0.
If the first time they’re different the value for lefti is greater than the value for righti, then the subtraction will produce a negative number. Right shifting a negative number 8 places then bitwise ANDing the result with eq (which is only 1 until two bytes differ, and then 0 henceforth if they do) will result in a value for 1 with gt. Thus, if (righti – lefti) is negative, gt will be set to 1. Otherwise, it remains 0.
At the end of this loop, return (gt + gt + eq) – 1. This will result in the following possible values:
- left < right: -1
- left == right: 0
- left > right: 1
The arithmetic based on the possible values of gt and eq should be straightforward.
- Different (eq == 0) but not greater (gt == 0) means left < right, -1.
- Different (eq == 0) and greater (gt == 1) means left > right, 1.
- If eq == 1, no bytes ever differed, so left == right, 0.
A little endian implementation is as follows:
```
<?phpfunction str_compare(string $left, string $right): int{    $length = mb_strlen($left, '8bit');    if (mb_strlen($right, '8bit') !== $length) {        throw new Exception('ct_select() expects two strings of equal length');    }    $gt = 0;    $eq = 1;    $i = $length;    while ($i > 0) {        --$i;        $leftCharCode = unpack('C', $left[$i])[1];        $rightCharCode = unpack('C', $right[$i])[1];        $gt |= (($rightCharCode - $leftCharCode) >> 8) & $eq;        $eq &= (($rightCharCode ^ $leftCharCode) -1) >> 8;    }    return ($gt + $gt + $eq) - 1;}
```
Demo for this function is available here.
Constant-Time Integer Multiplication
Multiplying two integers is one of those arithmetic operations that should be constant-time. But on many older processors, it isn’t.
Of course there’s a microarchitecture timing leak! (Art by Khia.)
Fortunately, there is a workaround. It involves an algorithm called Ancient Egyptian Multiplication in some places or Peasant Multiplication in others.
Multiplying two numbers and this way looks like this:
1. Determine the number of operations you need to perform. Generally, this is either known ahead of time or .
2. Set to 0.
3. Until the operation count reaches zero:
  If the lowest bit of is set, add to .
  Left shift by 1.
  Right shfit by 1.
4. Return .
The main caveat here is that you want to use bitwise operators in step 3.1 to remove the conditional branch.
Rather than bundle example code in our blog post, please refer to the implementation in sodium_compat (a pure PHP polyfill for libsodium).
For big number libraries, implementing Karatsuba on top of this integer multiplying function should be faster than attempting to multiply bignums this way.
Constant-Time Integer Division
Although some cryptography algorithms call for integer division, division isn’t usually expected to be constant-time.
However, if you look up a division algorithm for unsigned integers with a remainder, you’ll likely encounter this algorithm, which is almost constant-time:
```
if D = 0 then error(DivisionByZeroException) endQ := 0                  -- Initialize quotient and remainder to zeroR := 0                     for i := n − 1 .. 0 do  -- Where n is number of bits in N  R := R << 1           -- Left-shift R by 1 bit  R(0) := N(i)          -- Set the least-significant bit of R equal to bit i of the numerator  if R ≥ D then    R := R − D    Q(i) := 1  endend
```
If we use the tricks we learned from implementing constant-time string inequality with constant-time conditional selection, we can implement this algorithm without timing leaks.
Our constant-time version of this algorithm looks like this:
```
if D = 0 then error(DivisionByZeroException) endQ := 0                  -- Initialize quotient and remainder to zeroR := 0                     for i := n − 1 .. 0 do  -- Where n is number of bits in N  R := R << 1           -- Left-shift R by 1 bit  R(0) := N(i)          -- Set the least-significant bit of R equal to bit i of the numerator  compared := ct_compare(R, D) -- Use constant-time inequality    -- if R > D  then compared ==  1, swap = 1  -- if R == D then compared ==  0, swap = 1  -- if R < D  then compared == -1, swap = 0  swap := (1 - ((compared >> 31) & 1))  -- R' = R - D  -- Q' = Q, Q[i] = 1  Rprime := R - D  Qprime := Q  Qprime(i) := 1 -- The i'th bit is set to 1  -- Replace (R with R', Q with Q') if swap == 1  R = ct_select(swap, Rprime, R)  Q = ct_select(swap, Qprime, Q)end
```
It’s approximately twice as slow as the original, but it’s constant-time.
(Art by Khia.)
Constant-Time Modular Inversion
Modular inversion is the calculation of for some prime . This is used in a lot of places, but especially in elliptic curve cryptography and RSA.
Daniel J. Bernstein and Bo-Yin Yang published a paper on fast constant-time GCD and Modular Inversion in 2019. The algorithm in question is somewhat straightforward to implement (although determining whether or not that implementation is safe is left as an exercise to the rest of us).
A simpler technique is to use Fermat’s Little Theorem: for some prime . This only works with prime fields, and is slower than a Binary GCD (which isn’t necessarily constant-time, as OpenSSL discovered).
BearSSL provides an implementation (and accompanying documentation) for a constant-time modular inversion algorithm based on Binary GCD.
(In the future, I may update this section of this blog post with an implementation in PHP, using the GMP extension.)
Constant-Time Null-Byte Trimming
Shortly after this guide first went online, security researchers published the Raccoon Attack, which used a timing leak in the number of leading 0 bytes in the pre-master secret–combined with a lattice attack to solve the hidden number problem–to break TLS-DH(E).
To solve this, you need two components:
1. A function that returns a slice of an array without timing leaks.
2. A function that counts the number of significant bytes (i.e. ignores leading zero bytes, counts from the first non-zero byte).
A timing-safe array resize function needs to do two things:
1. Touch every byte of the input array once.
2. Touch every byte of the output array at least once, linearly. The constant-time division algorithm is useful here (to calculate x mod n for the output array index).
3. Conditionally select between input[x] and the existing output[x_mod_n], based on whether x >= target size.
I’ve implemented this in my constant-time-js library:
- resize.ts
- trim.ts
Further Reading and Online Resources
If you’re at all interested in cryptographic side-channels, your hunger for knowledge probably won’t be sated by a single blog post. Here’s a collection of articles, papers, books, etc. worth reading.
- BearSSL’s Documentation on Constant-Time Code — A must-read for anyone interested in this topic
- Cryptographically Secure PHP Development — How to write secure cryptography in languages that cryptographers largely neglect
- CryptoCoding — A style guide for writing secure cryptography code in C (with example code!)
- CryptoGotchas — An overview of the common mistakes one can make when writing cryptography code (which is a much wider scope than side-channels)
- Meltdown and Spectre — Two vulnerabilities that placed side-channels in the scope of most of infosec that isn’t interested in cryptography
- Serious Cryptography — For anyone who lacks the background knowledge to fully understand what I’m talking about on this page
Errata
- 2020-08-27: The original version of this blog post incorrectly attributed Jacobian coordinate blinding to ECDSA hardening, rather than ECDH hardening. This error was brought to my attention by Thai Duong. Thanks Thai!
- 2020-08-27: Erin correctly pointed out that omitting memory access timing was a disservice to developers, who might not be aware of the risks involved. I’ve updated the post to call this risk out specifically (especially in the conditional select code, which some developers might try to implement with pointer swapping without knowing the risks involved). Thanks Erin!
I hope you find this guide to side-channels helpful.
Thanks for reading!
Follow my blog for more Defense Against the Bark Arts posts in the future.
https://soatok.blog/2020/08/27/soatoks-guide-to-side-channel-attacks/
#asymmetricCryptography #constantTime #cryptography #ECDH #ECDSA #ellipticCurveCryptography #RSA #SecurityGuidance #sideChannels #symmetricCryptography
#asymmetriccryptography #constanttime #cryptography #ecdh #ecdsa #ellipticcurvecryptography
OutOfExile_IDR § Blog @[email protected] · 2024-08-31 · 03:08 UTC

CONTENT WARNING: The details and linked videos of this event may be disturbing to some.
August 24, 2019:
Elijah McClain, a massage therapist, violinist, and “gentle soul”, was walking home from a convenience store not, far from his home in Aurora, Colorado. Because of his anemia, which often made him feel cold, he was known to where a ski mask. On his way home, someone in a house he passed called police to report an unarmed, “sketchy” individual. Minutes Later, Aurora PD’s Nathan Woodyard saw Elijah walking to his home and stopped. Within 9 sec. of exiting his car, Woodyard had his hands on Elijah McClain. Just seconds later, officers Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt showed up, also engaging with Elisha. As he explained he was an “introvert“, and was “just walking home“, one of the officers responded, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation”.
The officers had McClain against the wall, before taking the five feet seven, 143 lb man to the ground. One of their body cameras was detached and landed in the grass, capturing an officer slowly walking out of view. With Elijah and police no longer being filmed clearly, one officer can be heard claiming, “he just grabbed your gun dude“. Within four seconds of the allegation, Elijah can be heard choking as a result of police applying the carotid restraint, restricting his airflow. FOUR SECONDS?! One of the officers later told investigators that McClain “briefly” fell unconscious and the officers released their grasp on his neck. The chokehold was implemented only one minute and four seconds after the first officer exited his vehicle. The three officers involved, Woodyard, Rosenblatt and Roedema, all claimed their body cameras “fell off ” in the “struggle” with this small statured young man.
The video footage is very difficult to listen to. Elijah McClain can be heard gasping as he pleads with officers to stop, saying, “I can’t breathe“. Elijah continues to plead, saying his name and that he was “just going home“. Through his sobs, came the words I, and many others with invisible disabilities, will never forget. “I’m just different. I’m just different, that’s all“. It’s hard to difficult the police on the audio of one body cam, but Elijah’s words are clear… “I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me?”. As officers ignore his pleas, they seem to spin tales of their “struggle” with a 143 pound person. One repeated the accusation that McClain tried to grab officer Roedema’s gun, and that they “had” to use the carotid hold.
About six minutes after the initial contact by police, Elijah McClain can be heard vomiting for the first time. One of the officers commands him to “STOP“, to which McClain apologized, saying, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to do that. I just can’t breathe correctly”. In the next few minutes, McClain gets sick “a few more times” while officers held him face-down, repeatedly telling him to “stop resisting“. Reports say he was also handcuffed and still wearing the ski mask when he was sick, and as a result, was struggling to breathe. He may have been trying to roll on his side, or remove the mask to breathe better, as police seemed to be acting out a show of “resisting arrest” for the body cam audio.
The officers can be heard threatening him, “Don’t get up. It’s not gonna be good for you, I’m telling you right now“. Another officer standing over him said “You keep messin’ around, I’m unna bring my dog out here“, saying he would let the dog attack Elijah. Approximately 11 minutes after the initial contact by officer Woodyard, the cameras capture police saying, “When the ambulance gets here, were gonna go ahead and give him some ketamine“. This is also when they claimed “whatever he’s on, he has incredible strength”, as another concurs “yeah, crazy strength”. It’s alarming that police, and individuals of such character, have authority to mandate the administering of this powerful sedative.
Image from another officers body cam footage. Read Alt text for more.
The timing of the accusation that Elijah McClain attempted to grab the firearm, only seconds after body cams were removed, is highly suspect. Again, McClain was 143 lbs, being held by three much larger men. While one of the officer’s body cam was still attached, another can be heard telling him to “move” his camera. I don’t believe the body cams dislodged, and firmly believe these accused murderers doffed them. The Maclean’s attorney said police intentionally removed their body cameras “to support a false allegation that McClain reached for a gun“. Though it is not clear on the video, there is absolutely, no doubt in my mind, the accusation is false. The same is true, regarding their claims for body cam audio that Elijah was “struggling“. If he was struggling, it was likely for air and survival.
The report from paramedics, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec claimed that when they arrived, Elijah was displaying signs of “excited delirium“. The snap “diagnosis” was made, despite never touching, talking to, or checking Maclean’s vitals. Were these paramedics scapegoating in an effort to protect their fellow first responders? After incorrectly estimating his weight, the paramedics administered 500 mg of ketamine to McClain, a dosage for someone nearly 60 to 70 pounds larger. For those who believe in forcibly drugging people, the proper ketamine dosage for Elijah’s weight, is about 325 mg. Approximately 23 minutes after Nathan Woodyard stopped “to talk” to McClain, the officers involved were informed, Elijah, had no pulse. Less than a week later, he was declared brain-dead on August 27, and died, five years ago today, on August 30, 2019.
According to cpr.org – CPR news: “After McClain’s death, Dr. Stephen Cina, a contractor forensic pathologist for Adams County, completed the autopsy on Sept. 3, 2019. There were two Aurora police officers, and two representatives from the Adams County District Attorney’s office in attendance“. I’d be interested to hear that conversation, considering the findings of the autopsy. The Adams County corner ruled the cause of death as “undetermined“, saying that, “a therapeutic amount” of ketamine was found in Maclean’s system. The report, reeking of scapegoating, speculated about drug use and undiagnosed mental illness, while seeming to conclude nothing, but suppositional ifs.
Excerpt from Dr. Cina’s report: “The manner of death may be accident if it was an idiosyncratic drug reaction,” . “It may be natural if (McClain) had an undiagnosed mental illness that led to excited delirium, if his intense physical exertion combined with a narrow coronary artery led to an arrhythmia, if he had an asthma attack, or if he aspirated vomit while restrained.”… “It may be a homicide if the actions of officers led to his death (eg. carotid control hold…)”.
That’s a lot of “Ifs”. I can’t help but wonder “IF”, the presence of officers and DA personnel “may” have influence the doctors findings. In conjunction with the corners “undetermined” autopsy determination, Adams County DA Dave Young said, he would not bring charges against the officers. This seeming manipulation of justice, by those who controlled it, was met with outrage.
Another slap in the face, illuminating the culture of Aurora PD, occurred in October 2019, less than two months after Elijah’s death. Several other officers returned to the scene, taking pictures while they joyfully reenacted the cardioid hold, used on McClain. In July, 2020, after the photos were made public, three officers were fired and one resigned. It’s remarkable that they were fired for mocking and taking pictures, while the officers accused of killing Elijah, were still patrolling the streets. The shouts of “Justice for Elijah”, became louder as it seemed this heinous police action was being ignored. Once again, protesters took to the streets.
AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File) – BF Denver Post – Read Alt text for more.
Protests and Indictments:
The winds of change began to blow in the summer of 2020. A change.org petition compiled over 2 million signatures, seeking justice for Elijah McClain. On June 10, 2020, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told the public, Atty Gen Phil Weiser would be investigating the death of McClain. Also that June, protesters shut down a section of Interstate 225, demanding accountability for his death. In the series of peaceful demonstrations, protesters were also targeted by police. During one of those protests, when heavily militarized police arrived, the legendary chant began, “WHY ARE YOU IN RIOT GEAR! WE DON’T SEE NO RIOT HERE“. Finally, there was momentum in the battle for some form of justice.
In September, 2021, over two years after the crime, a 32 count grand jury indictment charged the five first responders for their actions. The forensic pathologist who was part of the grand jury investigation, concluded the cause of death was “homicide“. The individuals named in the grand jury indictment were: officers Randy Roedema, Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt, and paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec. All five were charged with Manslaughter and Criminally negligent homicide, among other charges. Roedema, Rosenblatt and both EMTs were additionally charged with Second-degree assault and Crime of violence.
Protesters shut down Interstate 225. Read Alt text for more.
The indictment was followed by a series of other events. In September 2022, well after the grand jury indictment, Adams County announced, the original 2019 autopsy report had been amended. It now stated the means as “COMPLICATIONS OF KETAMINE ADMINISTRATION FOLLOWING FORCIBLE RESTRAINT“. However, the cause of death was still listed as “UNDETERMINED“, rather than “homicide”. Interestingly enough, in November 2021, the city of Aurora agreed to pay the family of Elijah McClain, $15 million to settle a federal civil rights action.
After much legal wrangling, many delays, and the passing of four long years, the five accused murderers, were tried in three separate cases. Nathan Woodyard, the first Aurora officer on the scene, who put his hands on Elijah within nine seconds, stood trial alone. The other two officers, Randy Roedema and Jason Rosenblatt, faced “justice” in the same proceeding. The paramedics, Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec, were also put on trial together. I gave daily reports during the trials, but ultimately became disgusted by the outcomes. I do not believe justice was properly served.
Image showing protests and mugshots of the accused. Read Alt text for more.
In the joint trial of the two Aurora officers, the jury found Randy Roedema guilty of criminally negligent homicide, and third-degree assault causing bodily injury. Officer Jason Rosenblatt was acquitted, and will serve no jail time. After the verdict, Elijah McClain’s mother, Sheneen, told reporters as she left the courthouse, “… I’m pissed!”. I must say, so am I! Randy Roedema, the only officer to be incarcerated for the murder, was sentenced to 14 months with options for work-release prison time.
In June, the Denver Post reported that Randy Roedema told a judge “he is depressed, paranoid, sleeping poorly and has lost 30 pounds since beginning his part-time jail sentence”. I imagine, Elijah’s mother has been sleeping poorly for four years. He claims jail is too tough? I’m sure it’s not half as tough, as what he subjected Elijah McLean to.
Both of the paramedics were found guilty for their part in the administration of ketamine to Elijah McClain. Peter Cichuniec, the EMT who estimated Elijah’s weight, and authorized the administration of the drug, was convicted of criminally negligent homicide, and “second-degree unlawful administration of drugs”. The other, Jeremy Cooper was convicted, only of criminally negligent homicide, and sentenced to 14 months of work-release, four years probation and 100 hours of community service. Peter Cichuniec, was sentenced to the minimum, five years in prison.
Officer Woodyard, the first on the scene, was acquitted of all charges and, essentially “paid” to leave the Aurora Colorado Police Department. After joining the force in 2016, and being acquitted after his trial, Woodyard initially said he planned to return to the department. In January of this year, he resigned instead, and was paid almost a half million dollars by the city.
In public records obtained by the Denver Post, “following his acquittal and resignation”, he was paid a total of $429,895.51 by the city of Aurora.
According to the documents obtained by the Post, “the money paid to Woodyard came in three payments”:
⦁ Nov. 22 – $212,546.04 in back pay accrued while he was suspended;
⦁ Jan. 19 – $200,000 for “backpay, accrued leave, and other consideration” – including an agreement not to pursue any claims against the city;
⦁ Jan. 19 – $17,349.47 to cover the cost of one year of medical coverage.
If the group of five men that did this, where civilians, what do you think there penalty would have been? Nathan Woodyard, served no time, and is now over $400,000 richer, in part, because of his involvement in the incident. The others were given a slap on the hand, when considering the magnitude of the crime. According to other investigations, Aurora Colorado’s pattern of policing, has raised concerns of implicit bias towards those with invisible disabilities, POC and other marginalized people. In so many ways this is a travesty of justice to so many. Elijah McClain suffered during the event, and for days before his passing. His family, is still suffering. Justice for Elijah McClain? Balderdash!
It’s reported that over 1100 people were killed by police in 2022, 1,329 in 2023, according to “”Mapping Police Violence”. Other reports say, “half of people killed by police have a disability”. It seems to be a dangerous time if someone decides another is different, especially if that someone has authority. People with disabilities are not a “new thing”, and represent about 26% of the US population. Why should it be necessary to teach those sworn to “”serve and protect””, basics like: understanding, accommodation, proper communication, and preservation of dignity, when it comes to invisible disability? Can things like human decency, actually be taught with “”adequate training””?
Considering Elijah and the story of Christian Glass, is it any wonder many individuals with invisible disabilities, are afraid to call police for help? How many such crimes are covered up or not reported? More importantly, why did so many have to suffer, before anyone heard them call… “”I’m just different. I’m just different, that’s all””.
OutOfExile_IDR™ © 2023
Photo of Memorial to Elijah McClain. Read Alt text for more.
Elijah McClain’s last words: CW
“I can’t breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. That’s my house. I was just going home. I’m an introvert. I’m just different. That’s all. I’m so sorry. I have no gun. I don’t do that stuff. I don’t do any fighting. Why are you attacking me? I don’t even kill flies! I don’t eat meat! I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people who do eat meat. Forgive me. All I was trying to do was become better. I will do it. I will do anything. Sacrifice my identity, I’ll do it. You all are phenomenal. You are beautiful and I love you. Try to forgive me. I’m a mood Gemini. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Ow, that really hurt! You are all very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. [after vomiting] Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to do that. I just can’t breathe correctly.”

OutOfExile_IDR™ – © 2024

All writings, images, graphics, logos, and other content by: OutOfExile_IDR™ unless credited otherwise.
All Rights Reserved. No Scraping.

Source Links:
Half of People Killed by Police Have a Disability: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/half-people-killed-police-suffer-mental-disability-report-n538371
Six minute video analysis of Elijah McClain’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGlHMZQtO7U
Full 3 hour video including multiple officers body cam footage and Elijah McClain’s mother attempting to get answers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5NcyePEOJ8
Timeline, analysis of body cam footage in Elijah McClain case: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/elijah-mcclain/elijah-mcclain-body-camera-video-analysis-timeline/73-68537e78-add9-4e66-97c6-a22c080b1e1e
Police mock the death of Elijah McClain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giOB3LJj_g0
Accused killers plead not guilty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUU-xE-uouQ
Protesters targeted: https://www.thecut.com/2021/10/how-aurora-colorado-police-cover-up-misconduct-and-brutality.html
“Hundreds of Officers That Have Been Labeled Liars. Some Still Help Send People to Prison”: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/10/14/brady-lists-police-officers-dishonest-corrupt-still-testify-investigation-database/2233386001/
Aurora officer paid “to leave the force: https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/aurora-officer-nathan-woodyard-resignation-agreement-acquitted-elijah-mcclain-death/73-29dfd591-c3c1-4b79-a5d5-64f7441ed7f8
Example of Aurora PD’s racial profiling: https://sentinelcolorado.com/metro/police-courts/aurora-cop-who-shot-boy-14-part-of-unlawful-search-settlement-of-black-man/
Legal analysis by Wolfberg and Wirth: https://www.ems1.com/legal/articles/legal-analysis-what-the-paramedic-criminal-charges-in-the-elijah-mcclain-case-mean-for-ems-wIPxkOn0Hn4ToKVk/
Wikipedia page containing a link to the 911 call and police body camera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain
https://outofexileidr.vivaldi.net/2024/08/31/the-death-of-elijah-mcclain-five-years-ago-today-how-first-responders-killed-elijah-mcclain/
#BLM #ElijahMcClain #EndAbleism #Hero #IMDifferent #ICantBreathe #Justice4Elijah #SocialJustice #SocialJusticeone #StopKillingUs #Writing #ActuallyAutistic #disability #I #JusticeForElijahMcClain #NoJusticeNoPeace

#blm #elijahmcclain #endableism #hero #imdifferent #icantbreathe
Bryan King @[email protected] · 2025-07-09 · 11:30 UTC
Men of the Mic: Legendary Hams Who Built the Community
2,179 words, 12 minutes read time.
There’s something timeless and quietly powerful about a man at a desk, microphone in hand, patiently tuning across the bands for a distant voice. It’s more than just a hobby; for many, amateur radio is a testament to curiosity, craftsmanship, and the deep desire to connect. Over the last century, countless men have sat at their radios, some unknown beyond their local nets, others rising to legendary status. Their stories still ripple through our repeaters and field days, inspiring the next wave of men who will pick up a mic and join this global fraternity.
If you’re a man eyeing your first license or dreaming of building your own shack, this journey through the lives of legendary hams will be more than history — it’s a roadmap, showing how technical skill, generosity, and camaraderie have always been the bedrock of amateur radio. And by understanding the men who built this community, you’ll find your own place among them one day.
The Founding Fathers of Ham Radio
It’s impossible to appreciate amateur radio’s rich tapestry without tipping our hats to the men who quite literally invented the medium. Their stories are the origin myths of our shared obsession.
Hiram Percy Maxim, whose call sign W1AW still echoes daily as the flagship station of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), was far more than a hobbyist. An engineer and inventor, Maxim was the quintessential tinkerer, a man who found beauty in complex gears and wires. In 1914, he founded the ARRL to organize a chaotic landscape of independent amateurs, many of them teenagers stringing wire from their parents’ rooftops. By setting standards for relaying messages across the nation, Maxim didn’t just build an organization — he fostered the first large-scale brotherhood of radio amateurs.
His creation of the “Wouff Hong,” a whimsical yet stern device supposedly used to enforce good operating practices, underlines his belief that with the freedom of the airwaves came responsibility. When today’s operators remind each other to maintain discipline on the bands, they’re echoing Maxim’s century-old ethic.
Long before Maxim, of course, came the men whose breakthroughs made radio possible. Samuel Morse, though best known for the code that bears his name, was also a relentless promoter of long-distance communication. Guglielmo Marconi took that spark and pushed it across oceans, becoming arguably the first “amateur” by experimenting well outside established commercial infrastructure. When Marconi’s signal crossed the Atlantic in 1901, it was less an engineered certainty and more a daring gamble — the sort of risk every good ham instinctively understands.
Even Hugo Gernsback, remembered by many as the father of science fiction, played a vital role. His radio magazines educated thousands of young men who would become the first true amateurs, laying the groundwork for the clubs and societies we rely on today.
Engineers, Innovators, and Celebrity Operators
What is it about men who build things with their hands that so often draws them to amateur radio? Perhaps it’s the perfect blend of theory and practical tinkering. The hobby attracts those who yearn to know not just that something works, but precisely why and how.
Take Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple. Before he revolutionized personal computing, Woz was WV6VLY, fascinated by radio circuits and pushing RF signals into the ether from his California home. Even after his Apple success, he remained an advocate for ham radio’s power to teach electronics in a hands-on way that books alone never could.
Then there’s Bob Moog, whose name is synonymous with the synthesizer. Lesser known is that Moog was K2AMH, a dedicated operator who found joy in both music and radio frequency design. The careful balancing of voltages in an oscillator isn’t far removed from tuning a VFO. For men like Moog, amateur radio was as much a canvas as a utility.
Joseph Taylor, K1JT, stands at a fascinating crossroads. Already a Nobel laureate in physics for his work on pulsars, Taylor turned his brilliance to the amateur bands by developing WSJT, the software suite behind modes like FT8. These digital modes have revolutionized weak-signal work, letting hams complete contacts on bands once thought impractical. Taylor’s example shows how intellectual curiosity doesn’t stop at professional borders — sometimes, the professor wants to come home and see if he can snag a new country on 6 meters just like the rest of us.
Ray Dolby, of Dolby noise reduction fame, shared similar passions, holding an amateur license. It’s a telling pattern: men who push technical frontiers in their day jobs often retreat to the shack not just to relax, but to keep exploring. They’re proof that whether you’re designing world-changing technologies or soldering a kit on your workbench, the same thrill of discovery pulses through every good ham.
Ham Radio in Space and the Competitive Spirit
Few stories better capture the adventurous spirit of ham radio than those of operators who quite literally took it out of this world. In 1983, Owen Garriott, W5LFL, made the first amateur radio contacts from space aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. His casual QSOs from orbit to operators below were historic, proving the technology and launching the entire concept of “space stations on the air.” Garriott was followed by countless astronauts and cosmonauts, many of whom held amateur licenses before ever donning a flight suit.
Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, was himself a licensed operator (UA1LO), though most of his radio work was symbolic rather than operational. Still, there’s something profoundly moving in knowing that the men pushing humanity’s boundaries into orbit were often the same kids who once wound coils and trimmed antennas in their garages.
On Earth, that same pioneering spirit shows up in the fiercely contested world of radio sport. John Scott Redd, K0DQ, is a perfect example. A retired U.S. Navy vice admiral, he also happens to be a contesting legend, having won world championships in nearly every major DX contest. Men like Redd demonstrate that ham radio is as much a test of skill and endurance as any traditional sport — requiring strategy, technical acumen, and the unshakeable nerve to dig signals out of the noise when the clock is ticking.
Humanitarians, Educators, and Global Connectors
While it’s easy to be drawn to the technical marvels and competitive highs, some of amateur radio’s greatest men are remembered not for their rigs or contest scores, but for their compassion and commitment to public service.
Consider Marshall D. Moran, 9N1MM, an American Jesuit priest who became Nepal’s first ham operator. Arriving in the 1940s, Moran soon realized his modest station was the only reliable link between Kathmandu and the outside world. Countless climbers and trekkers owe their lives to the emergency traffic he relayed. In remote Himalayan villages, the reassuring crackle of 9N1MM on the air meant help was on the way.
Leslie R. Mitchell, G3BHK, similarly wove amateur radio into a global network of goodwill by founding Jamboree-On-The-Air (JOTA), the worldwide event that connects Scouts through amateur radio every October. Since its start in 1957, millions of young men have spoken to their first foreign friends over a radio Mitchell’s inspiration helped set up. In a world growing ever more polarized, these simple conversations — about hobbies, school, or what it’s like to camp under different stars — remind us that radio can be the ultimate bridge.
Early Experimenters and Broadcasting Pioneers
Long before the airwaves became crowded with thousands of daily QSOs, early experimenters were learning the hard way how to coax electrons into carrying voices.
Charles “Doc” Herrold of San Jose, California, was building primitive radio transmitters by 1909, predating even the first commercial broadcast stations. Herrold’s Sunday night shows were informal affairs, often just reading local news, but his enthusiasm laid crucial groundwork. Similarly, Charles E. Apgar, a mild-mannered insurance executive by day, used his home-built equipment to record clandestine German naval transmissions during World War I, helping break codes and ultimately saving ships.
These stories are worth retelling not only for their technical firsts but because they showcase amateur radio’s classic DNA: curious men, tinkering alone or with a handful of buddies, accidentally changing the world.
Kings, Anchormen, and Hollywood’s Quiet Operators
If amateur radio has a secret, it’s how often it lurks in the lives of men we wouldn’t expect. Walter Cronkite, whose authoritative baritone narrated America’s triumphs and tragedies, was also KB2GSD. Cronkite once narrated an ARRL film, famously concluding, “Amateur radio: what a wonderful hobby.” Coming from the most trusted man in journalism, it was an endorsement money couldn’t buy.
King Hussein of Jordan, JY1, was not content to be a figurehead. He operated regularly, chatting with common hams across the globe, reportedly insisting they drop the royal titles and just call him “Hussein.” And then there’s Marlon Brando, KE6PZH, who set up a radio on his private Tahitian island, reportedly making contacts to New Zealand just for the pleasure of breaking through the static.
Whether it’s Hollywood icons or heads of state, these men found in amateur radio the same satisfaction we all do: the joy of sending a signal into the dark and hearing a voice come back.
What These Men Teach Us
So why dwell on these stories? Because they prove again and again that amateur radio is more than a pastime. It’s a proving ground for technical skill, a sanctuary for curiosity, and, perhaps most importantly, a forge for character.
Every one of these legendary operators — whether Nobel physicist, pioneering priest, or retired sailor — shared the same humble beginnings as any newcomer. They struggled with code speed, burned fingers on soldering irons, fought RF feedback, and cursed propagation when their signals vanished into the ether. They became legends not by starting with extraordinary talent, but by pursuing their interest with steady, masculine resolve.
Their legacies tell us that the best hams aren’t defined by their equipment or QSL card collections, but by their willingness to serve, teach, and open the mic to strangers. This is the true brotherhood of amateur radio, and it’s as alive on your local repeater as in the halls of the ARRL.
A Word to the Men Still Considering Their License
If you’re reading this and still on the fence about getting your license, let these stories be your push. You don’t need a PhD, a palace, or even a fancy rig to join this fraternity. All you need is the spark that drove Maxim, the patience that guided Taylor, and the generosity that marked Moran’s every QSO.
Start by listening. Grab a cheap scanner, or tune into online SDRs. Visit a local club — you’ll find men who were once exactly where you are now, and who will be delighted to help you along. When you’re ready, pick up a study guide. Don’t worry if the material looks intimidating. Remember: every Nobel laureate and king we mentioned once puzzled over the same resistor color codes and license manuals.
Above all, understand that by stepping into this world, you’re joining a continuum stretching back more than a century — a line of men who built not just circuits and antennas, but a global brotherhood.
Wrapping Up: Join the Conversation
Amateur radio is richer for the men who made it their passion, and it waits for you to add your voice. If these stories of legendary hams have sparked something in you — if you find your mind drifting to DXpeditions, contest pileups, or late-night chats with faraway strangers — don’t let it fade. Take the first step.
Before you go, we’ve got even more stories waiting. This is the first of a special two-part series. Next week, we’ll shine the spotlight on the incredible “Women of the Mic: Legendary Hams Who Built the Community.” Don’t miss it — subscribe to our newsletter so you’ll be the first to know when it drops. Let’s keep exploring this amazing brotherhood (and sisterhood) together!
Also, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Who are the operators that inspire you? Have you had a mentor, or perhaps a memorable first contact that set your course? Drop a comment below and join our growing community of men exploring what’s possible over the air. And if you want more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter. Together, we’ll keep this brotherhood strong for the next century of men at the mic.

D. Bryan King

Sources
Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author. The information provided is based on personal research, experience, and understanding of the subject matter at the time of writing. Readers should consult relevant experts or authorities for specific guidance related to their unique situations.

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Canvases By Peter @[email protected] · 2025-01-07 · 03:56 UTC

So, the big security message which Commbank put across everyone's account during the last month & forced everyone to click 'Agree' to get rid of so they could access their own money was a HUGE flop!! It amounted to nothing at all, less than nothing in fact, this is the first time I've ever had a scammer access my account, and it happened directly after commbank instigated this "you beaut new/greatest" security measure.. The scammers are laughing their asses off..
#CommBank #CommonwealthBank

#commbank #commonwealthbank
Sharon A. Hill @[email protected] · 2020-07-17 · 16:20 UTC

Pic de Bugarach: The mysterious mountain
Pic de Bugarach in Aude, France, is a place that effortlessly combines natural wonder and legends. Add to its history a heaping portion of serious scientific misunderstandings, flavor with rumors and imaginative speculation, then bake for centuries, and the result is a bizarre mashup of fact and fiction that satisfies in our modern spooky times.
Vassil / CC0
There are so many sacred mountains around the world. Perhaps every significant peak has its own mythical origin story. Pic de Bugarach, ranks near the top. Its geological oddness was recognized early in the scientific community as one of the “Pyrenean Paradoxes”. But the copious number of metaphysical claims about this particular mountain is striking. To demonstrate the weirdness, I can’t do better than to quote from a horrendous website called Mary Magdalene France Tours. I leave the spelling and punctuation as in the original:
Pic De Bugarach is both an energetic and geological phenomenon. Geologists say Bugarach is a mountain built upside down. Thousands of years ago when the formations of the Pyrenees Mountains were arising out from the earth one particular peak arose and was toppled over in this cataclysmic transition. […] From an energetic perspective Pic De Bugarach is one of the special power centers of the world holding a dynamic presence for the planet. This relatively small mountain, standing less than 4,000 feet above sea level and a two and a half-hour walk to the top from its base, is a Stargate. A conduit for energies (and possibly life-forms) from other dimensions and realities to pass into the earth, as well as move out from a deep source within the planet. Those with extrasensory abilities, perceive an invisible cloud-like formation directly above the small dome shape peak, it is the entry point into something beyond the human/earth experience, something at such a higher vibration few humans can comprehend all of what it is. […] It appears Pic De Bugarach was designed through the thousands of years for this very function as it has an energetic presence (most likely due to the Stargate) with lay lines streaming out in a variety of directions. The early places of worship were built on the lay lines and later Catholic Churches and Chateaus constructed their temples on the same spots.
Bart Sharp
The writer then meanders into musing about earth chakras, but I will spare you any more of this “sciencey New Age” (or “Sewage”) prattle. This source hits upon most of the claims about the mountain that circulate in fiction (which some think are fact), in paranormal circles, and in modern media. The town of Bugarach itself even capitalized on the weirdness for their own means.
Jcb-caz-11 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Claims
You don’t need extra-sensory ability to notice that the mountain above the sleepy commune-village of Bugarach has a certain presence. Its height at 1230m, while not towering, is enough to generate clouds that shroud the peak. Sources mentioned it is also called ”the crossroads of the four winds” and link it to Atlantis (of course). A few online sources give a magical origin to the peak saying (without reference) that the name is derived from the tale of two brave dwarfs (or children of Jupiter) called Bug and Arag who were granted a wish by the Gods. They wished for a mountain that would shelter the three regions of Roussillon, Corbieres, and Aude. More legitimate sources ignore that tale and opt for a more mundane naming of the village from a Roman settler.
The mountain has caves that are said to be “magical” or full of beautiful crystals. There are rumors of a river and lake under the mountain. There are also stories of old mines and burial crypts. The caves are linked to the colorful conspiratorial tales about Mary Magdalene, and even Jesus, escaping to France. The Cathars, a religious sect in opposition to the Catholics, supposedly hid sacred items in the area, including perhaps in these caves, and kept the location secret and protected. Pic de Bugarach is only about 20 miles from Rennes-le-Chateau, one of the rumored resting places of the lost treasure of the Knights Templars. Daniel Bettex was consumed by his search for the Ark of the Covenant in the mountain. In 1988, his correspondence to others relates that he was looking for the entrance to this hidden world of treasure. When he seemed days away from a revelatory discovery, he was found dead. The circumstances of his death were never made clear and feed additional conspiracies about clandestine groups still guarding the mountain and various secrets or treasures.
The most durable claim is that the mountain is a place of special energy. This is often associated with its unusual geology but also that it is located on the Paris meridian ley line and is part of a system of sacred geometry of earth features. The mountain is said to be “magnetic” and cause compasses to malfunction, so much so that planes will not fly over it because their equipment fails. The nebulous “energy” seems to affect some people positively and others negatively. Strange sounds and lights are said to come from inside. These arcane stories morphed in recent times to encompass the belief that the mountain was a UFO base. The caves, which were also thought to be a passage to the hollow earth or another dimension, were now a hiding place for alien craft.
LucasD / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Inspiration
It is not altogether clear why the mountain of Bugarach was considered sacred and why it motivated many in the weaving of such fantastic yarns. Jules Verne was influenced by it and ultimately strengthened its mysterious nature. Bugarach is said to be where he found the inspiration (and the entrance) for his Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Famous sci-fi story weaver Stephen Spielberg also poked around here and may have formed ideas for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, prior to choosing Devils Tower in Wyoming as the alien rendezvous location. We can see several similarities between the two locations! But in several ways, Bugarach has the upper hand in weirdness.
The swirling mysteries of Pic de Bugarach coalesced in 2012 around the imaginative rumblings about the Mayan apocalypse. In the approach to the so-called doomsday, the mayor of Bugarach appealed to authorities to help him safeguard his village from the hoards of “esoterics” that were coming to the mountain because of its sacred energy. A narrative emerged that the alien craft holed up inside the mountain caves would emerge on the day of destruction and whisk away the lucky pilgrims. The mayor clearly embellished the stories as a way to push out unwanted visitors, depicting them as a possible suicide cult. The media took the bait, repeating many of the spooky and outrageous claims about the village’s magic mountain.
“These blasted prophets from all over the world have turned our mountain into some sort of UFO garage,”
Jean-Pierre Delord, mayor of Bugarach. Reuters
The hot topics of aliens and Mayans intersecting at one sacred mystical mountain were headline gold. The apocalypse at the end of 2012 in all aspects was a giant bust. The mountain was quiet; no crowds came.
ThierryS / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Geology
What’s next is to unpack the actual geology of the Pic de Bugarach. Crazy stories are fun and popular and blatant errors will regularly be passed on and assumed to be factual. Several popular sources repeat the misleading information that the mountain was an ancient volcano. In one absurd book, author Richard Leviton (Walking in Albion, 2010) compares it to Tolkien’s land of Mordor. Although there are extinct volcanoes in the area, Pic de Bugarach isn’t one. Tales of smoke from the mountain are more likely from the clouds that readily condense around it.
Esoteric writer Phillip Coppens repeats that claim that Bugarach is an “upside down mountain” because the layers are millions of years older than the strata below. “It is as if someone shot the mountain in the air, flipped it around, and then it landed again.” Well… No. It’s not like that at all and no reasonable geologist would think this. But the analogy was gratuitously included in several media reports during the 2012 frenzy:
“Scientists say that is because when the 1,230-meter (4,040-foot) mountain erupted, its peak flipped upside down before crashing back down upon the mountain’s base.”
Yahoo News
The peak of Bugarach has long been called “the sacred mountain”; geologists say that soon after the mountain was formed, it exploded and the top landed upside-down.
New York Times
Maybe the media should ask an actual scientist/geologist instead of esotericists because, as we look back to the early days, geologists had a pretty good idea of what really happened here.
Back in the late 1800s, geology was congealing as a science, particularly in Europe. There was not just one but many “paradoxical” locations in the Pyrenees where the law of superposition appeared to be violated. The idea of nappes — large-scale overthrusts on a low angle fault plane caused by compression — had formed based on observations in the European Alps. Nappe (pronounced “nap”) belts were confirmed in similar locations: the Dinarides, Carpathians, and Balkans. Calling the circumstances nappe de charriage (thrust sheets), Marcel Alexandre Bertrand had examined earlier studies from the Glarus Alps and unraveled the tectonic story of rock layers that had been pushed, folded, and stacked upon each other like a rumpled cloth pushed across a table. The scientists of the time recognized the idea of compression of the crust but thought it was a result of the shrinking and cooling of the earth. The timing was just not right for anyone to recognize plate tectonics in action.
Parts of a nappe belt can become isolated when erosion dismembers the overthrust layer. These are called klippen. A klippe (pronounced “klip’-uh”) is an island of older rock with younger ones around it. So, it looks “upside down”. Pic de Bugarach is a klippe where Jurassic limestones were thrust over younger Cretaceous strata. In 1889, geologist M. Carez had determined Pic de Bugarach was related to charriage.
Rock masses are compressed so that the older rock (gray) over-rides the younger rock (white).
Later, erosion leaves windows and klippen as outliers.
No scientist ever had seriously held that Pic de Bugarach was a volcano or a mountain top blown over. Perhaps the idea of “overthrown” strata in the description of the formation of a nappe was misinterpreted by someone who wasn’t versed in geological concepts, and the sciencey-sounding idea was interesting enough to repeat. There may be small caves in the limestone but this is not a developed karst system. It’s wishful thinking alone to expect that there are reasonable hiding places for treasure here, not to mention the existence of such treasures to begin with. The exaggerated tales of energy and magnetism are also unfounded. Such claims can easily be tested but people would rather keep repeating the magical stories instead.
Even today, Bugarach is still plagued by misleading publicity and opportunists. The New Age Sewage continues to be propagated, unabated by facts and reality. People collect and sell ‘authentic’ Pic de Bugarach pieces to sell to the esoterics worldwide, much like magical crystals.
Across the world, misunderstanding of geology and natural features can lead people to think certain places are sacred, abodes of the gods or spirits, or doorways to evil realms. Like molten blobs, the stories accrete onto the place. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it can be. And the nonsense can mask a more elegant truth underneath.
For the story of Bettex and the publicity over 2012 in Bugarach, check out the Unexplained Mysteries podcast. Part 1 and 2.

Additional References
Stuart-Menteath, P. W. (1903). “The Pyrenean Paradoxes,” Pyrenean Geology, Part III.
Trümpy, R. (2001). Why plate tectonics was not invented in the Alps. Int J Earth Sciences. 90: 477- 483.
#aliens #ArkOfTheCovenant #Cathars #earthEnergy #esoterics #France #hiddenTreasure #Jesus #klippe #KnightsTemplar #leyLines #MaryMagdalene #MayanApocalypse #nappe #Pyrenees #sacredGeometry #Stargate #UFOs
https://sharonahill.com/?p=1441

#aliens #arkofthecovenant #cathars #earthenergy #esoterics #france
Sharon A. Hill @[email protected] · 2020-07-17 · 16:20 UTC

Pic de Bugarach: The mysterious mountain
Pic de Bugarach in Aude, France, is a place that effortlessly combines natural wonder and legends. Add to its history a heaping portion of serious scientific misunderstandings, flavor with rumors and imaginative speculation, then bake for centuries, and the result is a bizarre mashup of fact and fiction that satisfies in our modern spooky times.
Vassil / CC0
There are so many sacred mountains around the world. Perhaps every significant peak has its own mythical origin story. Pic de Bugarach, ranks near the top. Its geological oddness was recognized early in the scientific community as one of the “Pyrenean Paradoxes”. But the copious number of metaphysical claims about this particular mountain is striking. To demonstrate the weirdness, I can’t do better than to quote from a horrendous website called Mary Magdalene France Tours. I leave the spelling and punctuation as in the original:
Pic De Bugarach is both an energetic and geological phenomenon. Geologists say Bugarach is a mountain built upside down. Thousands of years ago when the formations of the Pyrenees Mountains were arising out from the earth one particular peak arose and was toppled over in this cataclysmic transition. […] From an energetic perspective Pic De Bugarach is one of the special power centers of the world holding a dynamic presence for the planet. This relatively small mountain, standing less than 4,000 feet above sea level and a two and a half-hour walk to the top from its base, is a Stargate. A conduit for energies (and possibly life-forms) from other dimensions and realities to pass into the earth, as well as move out from a deep source within the planet. Those with extrasensory abilities, perceive an invisible cloud-like formation directly above the small dome shape peak, it is the entry point into something beyond the human/earth experience, something at such a higher vibration few humans can comprehend all of what it is. […] It appears Pic De Bugarach was designed through the thousands of years for this very function as it has an energetic presence (most likely due to the Stargate) with lay lines streaming out in a variety of directions. The early places of worship were built on the lay lines and later Catholic Churches and Chateaus constructed their temples on the same spots.
Bart Sharp
The writer then meanders into musing about earth chakras, but I will spare you any more of this “sciencey New Age” (or “Sewage”) prattle. This source hits upon most of the claims about the mountain that circulate in fiction (which some think are fact), in paranormal circles, and in modern media. The town of Bugarach itself even capitalized on the weirdness for their own means.
Jcb-caz-11 / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Claims
You don’t need extra-sensory ability to notice that the mountain above the sleepy commune-village of Bugarach has a certain presence. Its height at 1230m, while not towering, is enough to generate clouds that shroud the peak. Sources mentioned it is also called ”the crossroads of the four winds” and link it to Atlantis (of course). A few online sources give a magical origin to the peak saying (without reference) that the name is derived from the tale of two brave dwarfs (or children of Jupiter) called Bug and Arag who were granted a wish by the Gods. They wished for a mountain that would shelter the three regions of Roussillon, Corbieres, and Aude. More legitimate sources ignore that tale and opt for a more mundane naming of the village from a Roman settler.
The mountain has caves that are said to be “magical” or full of beautiful crystals. There are rumors of a river and lake under the mountain. There are also stories of old mines and burial crypts. The caves are linked to the colorful conspiratorial tales about Mary Magdalene, and even Jesus, escaping to France. The Cathars, a religious sect in opposition to the Catholics, supposedly hid sacred items in the area, including perhaps in these caves, and kept the location secret and protected. Pic de Bugarach is only about 20 miles from Rennes-le-Chateau, one of the rumored resting places of the lost treasure of the Knights Templars. Daniel Bettex was consumed by his search for the Ark of the Covenant in the mountain. In 1988, his correspondence to others relates that he was looking for the entrance to this hidden world of treasure. When he seemed days away from a revelatory discovery, he was found dead. The circumstances of his death were never made clear and feed additional conspiracies about clandestine groups still guarding the mountain and various secrets or treasures.
The most durable claim is that the mountain is a place of special energy. This is often associated with its unusual geology but also that it is located on the Paris meridian ley line and is part of a system of sacred geometry of earth features. The mountain is said to be “magnetic” and cause compasses to malfunction, so much so that planes will not fly over it because their equipment fails. The nebulous “energy” seems to affect some people positively and others negatively. Strange sounds and lights are said to come from inside. These arcane stories morphed in recent times to encompass the belief that the mountain was a UFO base. The caves, which were also thought to be a passage to the hollow earth or another dimension, were now a hiding place for alien craft.
LucasD / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
Inspiration
It is not altogether clear why the mountain of Bugarach was considered sacred and why it motivated many in the weaving of such fantastic yarns. Jules Verne was influenced by it and ultimately strengthened its mysterious nature. Bugarach is said to be where he found the inspiration (and the entrance) for his Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Famous sci-fi story weaver Stephen Spielberg also poked around here and may have formed ideas for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, prior to choosing Devils Tower in Wyoming as the alien rendezvous location. We can see several similarities between the two locations! But in several ways, Bugarach has the upper hand in weirdness.
The swirling mysteries of Pic de Bugarach coalesced in 2012 around the imaginative rumblings about the Mayan apocalypse. In the approach to the so-called doomsday, the mayor of Bugarach appealed to authorities to help him safeguard his village from the hoards of “esoterics” that were coming to the mountain because of its sacred energy. A narrative emerged that the alien craft holed up inside the mountain caves would emerge on the day of destruction and whisk away the lucky pilgrims. The mayor clearly embellished the stories as a way to push out unwanted visitors, depicting them as a possible suicide cult. The media took the bait, repeating many of the spooky and outrageous claims about the village’s magic mountain.
“These blasted prophets from all over the world have turned our mountain into some sort of UFO garage,”
Jean-Pierre Delord, mayor of Bugarach. Reuters
The hot topics of aliens and Mayans intersecting at one sacred mystical mountain were headline gold. The apocalypse at the end of 2012 in all aspects was a giant bust. The mountain was quiet; no crowds came.
ThierryS / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
Geology
What’s next is to unpack the actual geology of the Pic de Bugarach. Crazy stories are fun and popular and blatant errors will regularly be passed on and assumed to be factual. Several popular sources repeat the misleading information that the mountain was an ancient volcano. In one absurd book, author Richard Leviton (Walking in Albion, 2010) compares it to Tolkien’s land of Mordor. Although there are extinct volcanoes in the area, Pic de Bugarach isn’t one. Tales of smoke from the mountain are more likely from the clouds that readily condense around it.
Esoteric writer Phillip Coppens repeats that claim that Bugarach is an “upside down mountain” because the layers are millions of years older than the strata below. “It is as if someone shot the mountain in the air, flipped it around, and then it landed again.” Well… No. It’s not like that at all and no reasonable geologist would think this. But the analogy was gratuitously included in several media reports during the 2012 frenzy:
“Scientists say that is because when the 1,230-meter (4,040-foot) mountain erupted, its peak flipped upside down before crashing back down upon the mountain’s base.”
Yahoo News
The peak of Bugarach has long been called “the sacred mountain”; geologists say that soon after the mountain was formed, it exploded and the top landed upside-down.
New York Times
Maybe the media should ask an actual scientist/geologist instead of esotericists because, as we look back to the early days, geologists had a pretty good idea of what really happened here.
Back in the late 1800s, geology was congealing as a science, particularly in Europe. There was not just one but many “paradoxical” locations in the Pyrenees where the law of superposition appeared to be violated. The idea of nappes — large-scale overthrusts on a low angle fault plane caused by compression — had formed based on observations in the European Alps. Nappe (pronounced “nap”) belts were confirmed in similar locations: the Dinarides, Carpathians, and Balkans. Calling the circumstances nappe de charriage (thrust sheets), Marcel Alexandre Bertrand had examined earlier studies from the Glarus Alps and unraveled the tectonic story of rock layers that had been pushed, folded, and stacked upon each other like a rumpled cloth pushed across a table. The scientists of the time recognized the idea of compression of the crust but thought it was a result of the shrinking and cooling of the earth. The timing was just not right for anyone to recognize plate tectonics in action.
Parts of a nappe belt can become isolated when erosion dismembers the overthrust layer. These are called klippen. A klippe (pronounced “klip’-uh”) is an island of older rock with younger ones around it. So, it looks “upside down”. Pic de Bugarach is a klippe where Jurassic limestones were thrust over younger Cretaceous strata. In 1889, geologist M. Carez had determined Pic de Bugarach was related to charriage.
Rock masses are compressed so that the older rock (gray) over-rides the younger rock (white).
Later, erosion leaves windows and klippen as outliers.
No scientist ever had seriously held that Pic de Bugarach was a volcano or a mountain top blown over. Perhaps the idea of “overthrown” strata in the description of the formation of a nappe was misinterpreted by someone who wasn’t versed in geological concepts, and the sciencey-sounding idea was interesting enough to repeat. There may be small caves in the limestone but this is not a developed karst system. It’s wishful thinking alone to expect that there are reasonable hiding places for treasure here, not to mention the existence of such treasures to begin with. The exaggerated tales of energy and magnetism are also unfounded. Such claims can easily be tested but people would rather keep repeating the magical stories instead.
Even today, Bugarach is still plagued by misleading publicity and opportunists. The New Age Sewage continues to be propagated, unabated by facts and reality. People collect and sell ‘authentic’ Pic de Bugarach pieces to sell to the esoterics worldwide, much like magical crystals.
Across the world, misunderstanding of geology and natural features can lead people to think certain places are sacred, abodes of the gods or spirits, or doorways to evil realms. Like molten blobs, the stories accrete onto the place. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it can be. And the nonsense can mask a more elegant truth underneath.
For the story of Bettex and the publicity over 2012 in Bugarach, check out the Unexplained Mysteries podcast. Part 1 and 2.

Additional References
Stuart-Menteath, P. W. (1903). “The Pyrenean Paradoxes,” Pyrenean Geology, Part III.
Trümpy, R. (2001). Why plate tectonics was not invented in the Alps. Int J Earth Sciences. 90: 477- 483.
#aliens #ArkOfTheCovenant #Cathars #earthEnergy #esoterics #France #hiddenTreasure #Jesus #klippe #KnightsTemplar #leyLines #MaryMagdalene #MayanApocalypse #nappe #Pyrenees #sacredGeometry #Stargate #UFOs
https://sharonahill.com/?p=1441

#aliens #arkofthecovenant #cathars #earthenergy #esoterics #france
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-01-01 · 13:58 UTC
Dr. A.N. Grier’s Top Ten(ish) of 2024
By Dr. A.N. Grier

If I were to rate the year of our Lord 2024, I’d give it a solid 4.5/5.0. No, I joke. FUCK 2024. Good riddance, fuck off, goodfuckingbye. This year, the layoffs continued (even affected some of our writers here), the prices skyrocketed, the World Series was bullshit, and landfills across the States are twice their capacity thanks to useless election fliers. This year has resulted in practically zero time to work on AMG efforts, write reviews, or listen to music as I continue to try to keep my job. Yay. Cheers to you, 2024—you sack of horse shit. Let’s go, 2025, you sassy bitch who suggests great things to come but probably won’t deliver. If only you could promise me more time doing the things I love—listening to metal, writing about it, and pretending to edit the other writers’ reviews while completely hammered. If so, I’d kiss you as the ball drops, take you to the back alley during the after-party, and promise not to poison your coffee the next morning.
But we aren’t there yet. We are still stuck in the past, looking over a mediocre year of metal, regurgitating the same shit we already wrote for each album on our lists. That way, you all can praise, argue, and whine about each choice and its placement. Thankfully, my lists rarely overlap with anyone else’s and no one actually gives a fuck, so my sleep patterns remain the same. Having passed the ten-year mark at this amazing madland, my tastes remain the same, and no one will be surprised that most of the selections here are the items I alone reviewed. That changes occasionally but with no time to think about music this year, you’ll be treated to odd takes and albums that only scored a 3.0. Oh no!1
Thank you to the AMG staff for their lackluster productivity and overrating tendencies. To Dolph, Kenny, and Sharky for introducing new segments and keeping legacy ones alive. And to Cuervo and GardensTale for the additional year-end contributions they deliver. I also have to give a huge shoutout to the top bosses—AMG and Steel Daddy—for all they do2. I guess I should also thank all of you for your continued support. I guess. May this list find you well as we are thrust into 2025 and the potential nightmares that it’ll bring. Cheers.

#ish. I Am the Intimidator // I Am the Intimidator – What? You fucking knew this was coming. When Steel told me to review an album about NASCAR and Dale Earnhardt, I couldn’t not do it. I mean, this one-off, self-titled record from a one-off band was a perfect opportunity to unleash my rage. And then… wait, what the fuck? It’s actually kinda good? In a weird year where I reviewed two racing-related albums, I Am the Intimidator sports3 six wild tracks that combine Dio and Iron Maiden with Ministry. What the fuck? And, somehow, the lyrics would be fucking hilarious if they weren’t so passionate. OK, the lyrics of the surprisingly delicious and crushing “Gasoline” are fucking hilarious, and a regular, all-caps attack in the AMG channels. After all the chaos and wild influences that make up this tight, six-track album, the passion for “The Intimidator” is true, even if it’s weird. But, I can’t stop listening to this album any more than I can stop drinking beer.
#10. Dust Bolt // Sound & Fury – Like so many other Grier lists, there’s always an album that becomes the most frequented in my shit-filled ears. Yup, I know, you all fucking hate it, and I couldn’t care less. For the band (and style), Sound & Fury is a brave effort that I find addictive, fun, and hilarious trolling material when Steel talks shit. Is it thrash? No, but that didn’t stop me from proclaiming Load as Metallica’s best album. Shifting away from the overused thrash concept and mediocre record releases, Dust Bolt chose the unconventional route of cleaner vocals, smoother production, and catchier choruses to remove themselves from their past outings (and, some would argue, from thrash and metal in general). For you naysayers, there are plenty of headbangable moments on Sound & Fury, so you don’t have to feel like a poser singing these new songs in your mom’s shower.
#9. Midnight // Hellish Expectations – Perhaps one of the most prolific metal bands out there, what can I say about Midnight that I haven’t said already? Oh yeah, they’re badass and if you don’t like them, you’re shit. Also, fuck you. Like previous releases, Midnight continues to speed through riffs that bring to mind classic outfits like Darkthrone, Motörhead, Venom, and Celtic Frost at a relentless speed. While other Midnight records are better, Hellish Expectations joins its compatriots in a discog that can do no wrong. Unless, of course, you don’t like this band’s style. In that case, read above regarding that “fuck you” thing. What makes Hellish Expectations great in this frustrating year is that it caps at twenty-five wonderful minutes—which is the same amount of time it takes to shit out your morning coffee. So, this is a chance to correct your poserness. If you like this band, you already know Hellish Expectations is a fun ride that’ll keep your spikes sharp and your leather pants shit free.
#8. Bombus // Your Blood – Like another band on my list, this Swedish heavy metal, hard rock band has seen a lot of ups and downs in their career. And, for some reason, their co-founding vocalist and guitarist walked. But that didn’t stop Bombus. Not only did they find someone to fill those two slots, but they also added another guitarist to round it out to three. With these new additions, the skill displayed on Your Blood is superior to anything the band has ever done. There’re solos, harmonizing leads, and riffs up the fucking wazoo. I’m uncertain if it’s due to this new skillset or an increase in motivation with five years between albums, but Bombus held nothing back for Your Blood. While there are plenty of the bangers you would expect from a band of this caliber, like the addictive “Take You Down,” there are also other interesting inclusions that I should hate, yet love. For example, the weird, Spaghetti Western qualities of “Your Blood,” the Nick Cave-meets-The White Stripes musings of “The One,” and the bizarreness that is “Carmina.” With Your Blood, the band has found their groove and passion again, delivering their best album yet.
#7. Vanessa Funke // Void – This year brought a surprising new addition to my favorite bands of all time. In this case, it was the newest release from the multi-instrumentalist, Vanessa Funke. With a small but stellar catalog, Ms. Funke continuously dabbles in new influences and song approaches with each album and Void is no different. Coming off last year’s acoustic masterpiece Vanessa Funke rewinds to her debut record, Solitude, alternating between rasps and cleans, acoustic and distorted guitars, and her perfectly molded combination of folk, melodeath, and atmospheric black metal. The textures created by the vocals, guitars, keys, and piano take Void down into some incredible depths, engulfing its listeners in blankets that can be both soft and stabby. Albums like this are rare for me these days, so when they do completely submerse me to the point that I can’t think of anything else, there’s no doubt it’ll make it on my year-end list.
#6. Crystal Viper // The Silver Key – Maybe not everyone’s favorite Polish act,4 Crystal Viper’s founding vocalist and guitarist, Marta Gabriel, has been knocking around her blend of heavy and power metal for nearly two decades. But, it’s been a rocky road of great, mediocre, and rage-inducing records. Where Crimen Expecta shines like a bright star in the sky, Tales of Fire and Ice is a dumpster fire that topped my most disappointing album of 2019. When I approached this year’s The Silver Key, I was expecting another mid album (or worse) but was immediately engrossed—maybe even more than Crimen Expecta. Though many of you dislike the vocals, Gabriel is in top form. But, her vocal performance is only one aspect of the Crystal Viper sound. Her guitar work is some of the best of her career, lending new ideas to the song structures and album flow. While plenty of bands are—and are not better—than Crystal Viper, The Silver Key is undeniably one of the best albums of their career.
#5. Sidewinder // Talons – Most likely one of the only overlaps I’ll have with the cunts that work here,5 Sidewinder’s newest release, Talons, threw me for a loop. Not expecting anything from a band I’ve never heard about, Talons immediately got my noggin’ bobbin’ in the most pleasing way. I can’t pinpoint exactly why I like this style of heavy, bounding stoner metal, but every time I hear it, it clicks. And nothing is better than diving right into a record where one of the band’s best pieces is the opener. “Guardians” is a quintessential Sidewinder piece that personifies the band and everything they stand for. But that’s only the beginning, as the guitars cruise down the road and the bass rumbles through the gravel. Clocking in at a mere thirty-four minutes, this eight-track beauty never reaches beyond its means, ensuring the songs are straight and tight, allowing Jem’s powerful vocals to direct the varying moods. While the band resides in the lush and beautiful landscapes of New Zealand,6 if a sound could represent the harsh desert lands of my home, this would be it.
#4. Aborted // Vault of Horrors – As many know, death metal is not my cup o’ tea. Once upon a time, death metal was my life, but that ship sailed when my favorites grew old and repetitive, and what you all call death metal these days bores me to tears. But the one band that continues to make me salivate is Aborted.7 And, boy, did this year’s Vault of Horrors deliver. With tracks like “Dreadbringer,” “The Golgothan,” and “Malevolent Haze,” this new release offers some incredible depth and relentless brutality. Aborted has always delivered good-to-great albums but after nearly thirty years, how can these lads continue to improve and produce such quality releases? Vault of Horrors is a great record and arguably one of the band’s best. It’s been several months since this beauty was released, so if it passed by you, rectify your posersivity.
#3. The Vision Bleak // Weird Tales – I don’t know what it is about The Vision Bleak but they fucking hit me and hit me hard. On the surface, their style is quite simple, but it’s the layers, stories, mood, and damning vocal performances that draw me in like I’m viewing a Vincent Price horror marathon. Combining their Type O Negative vocal characteristics with atmospheric moods that can be depressive at one point and ethereal at another, The Vision Bleak took a massive leap by releasing Weird Tales as (technically) a one-song album. Eight years since their incredible The Unknown, Weird Tales doesn’t skip a beat, maintaining the duo’s title as one of the greatest bands in gothic metal. With magnificent builds, eerie transitions, mind-bending fluidity, and heart-wrenching passages, the haunting nature of Weird Tales leaves you contemplating your existence in a world controlled by the fate instilled in it by the late, great H.P. Lovecraft.
#2. Kingcrow // Hopium – For fucking months, our progressive cunt, Dolphin Whisper, tried desperately to steal Kingcrow’s Hopium from me—somehow thinking he’s better than me when it comes to describing the lushness of Kingcrow. The fuck. Even though Kingcrow hasn’t released an album in six years, there’s no way some flipper fucker would take this from me. Sure, I’m not a huge fan of progressive metal, but at least I know what’s good progressive metal instead of lazily making love to everything with the tag of “prog.” Anyway, Hopium continues to deliver gorgeous tapestries painted with soothing vocals, synthy atmospheres, and impressive performances for all involved. Though I consider Eidos their best, Hopium is not far behind. While tapping into common influences like Dream Theater and Spock’s Beard, this Italian outfit is very much on a level all its own. If you like prog, you’ll find Hopium—with such wildly varying tracks like “Vicous Circle,” “Parallel Lines,” and “White Rabit’s Hole”—to be the most diverse prog record of the year.
#1. Borknagar // Fall – Goddammit, I love Borknagar. Few bands have such high album scores for a career that spans thirty years and a dozen albums—especially with a constant rotation of players and vocalists. Though, how can you be pissed off about having any of the great vocalists Borknagar has employed throughout the years? Since the beginning, the band has continuously introduced more melody and keys in their music, but Fall is special compared to the output in the last twenty years. Though this new album hasn’t hung up that hat by any means, Øystein G. Brun, Lars A. Nedland, and crew dug through the ashes of the past to bring some of those old-school black metal moments back into the mix. From the blackened assault of “Summits” and the Dimmu Borgir-esque vibes of “Northward,” the band continues to shock and surprise, avoiding a repetition from a previous album. So, dive into the best album o’ the year in all its glory.8
Honorable Mentions
- Portrait // The Host – While I didn’t like the production of Portrait’s The Host, I’m still a slut for King Diamond and Meryful Fate-adjacent metal. Especially when it comes to Portrait, who continues to be less like a copycat and more like a pioneer of the style.
- Attic // Return of the Witchfinder – More King Diamond-core! Easily one of the best examples of the sound, Attic continues to keep me coming back with each release. As their predecessor, Return of the Witchfinder brings a new story, more twists, and those pleasing falsettos that trigger my “O” face.
- Sarke // Endo Feight – Sarke (the artist) and crew have had one hell of a busy couple of years. This year, in particular, sees not only a new Sarke release but also a new Khold record (see below). Endo Feight is a wonderful addition to the band’s catalog and, by god, it’s wonderful to see the man himself back behind the kit.
- Khold // Du dømmes til død – See? I told you it would be here. While 2022’s Svartsyn was better record than Du dømmes til død (and a fantastic comeback), Du dømmes til død still has those elements that make the band so unique and fun to listen to.
- Blood Red Throne // Nonagon – Three years ago, Blood Red Throne released not only one of their best albums but 2021’s best death metal record. Unsurprisingly, it’s difficult to follow something like Imperial Congregation without some hiccups. That said, Nonagon is still a brutal piece of work worthy of mentioning.
Disappointments o’ the Year
- Darkthrone // It Beckons Us All……. – Like Sarke, Nocturno Culto has also been busy this year. If that’s part of the reason for the utter bore that’s It Beckons Us All……., I don’t know. But, this new record feels like Darkthrone is going through the motions. While I respect that they don’t care what the fuck any of us think, this is one of their worst albums.
- Exhorder // Defectum Omnium – After Exhorder’s incredible comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, I was more than a little excited for this new one. Unfortunately, like Darkthrone’s newest, Defectum Omnium is a dreadfully boring record that lacks all the passion of Exhorder’s comeback, leaving me confused and pissed the fuck off.
Songs o’ the Year
- Kingcrow – “White Rabbit’s Hole” – With an album full of great songs, there’s just something about the energy of this track that makes me so happy.
- Sidewinder – “Guardians” – This song represents some of the best stoner metal of 2024, and I can’t stop listening to it.
- Bombus – “Take You Down” – This song is just badass. I couldn’t care less what you think. Die.
Show 8 footnotes
1. Fuck off, this happens every year. ↩
2. Don’t call me Steel Daddy ever again! – Steel Daddy ↩
3. See what I did there? ↩
4. They can’t all be Vaders, ya fucks! ↩
5. Love you, GardensTale. ↩
6. Well, that’s what the Lord of the Rings movies tell me. ↩
7. Yeah, yeah, bitch all you want about including this band into my collective bubble of “death metal.” ↩
8. Also, stop listening to “Nordic Anthem” by itself. Fucking idiots. ↩
#2024 #Aborted #Attic #BlogPosts #BloodRedThrone #Bombus #Borknagar #CelticFrost #CrystalViper #Darkthrone #DimmuBorgir #Dio #DrANGrierSTopTenIshOf2024 #DreamTheater #DustBolt #Exhorder #IAmTheIntimidator #IronMaiden #Khold #KingDiamond #Kingcrow #Lists #MercyfulFate #Metallica #Midnight #Ministry #Motörhead #NickCave #Portrait #Sarke #Sidewinder #SpockSBeard #TheVisionBleak #TheWhiteStripes #TypeONegative #Vader #VanessaFunke #Venom
#aborted #attic #blogposts #bloodredthrone #bombus #borknagar
DoomsdaysCW @[email protected] · 2024-05-19 · 18:20 UTC

[May be behind a paywall] The Strongest #SolarStorm in 20 Years Did Little Damage, but Worse #SpaceWeather Is Coming
Years of careful planning helped safeguard against last weekend’s severe space weather, but we still don’t know how we’d cope with a monster event
By Jonathan O'Callaghan & Lee Billings
May 16, 2024
"For years, we have been warned about impending doom from the sun. If pointed in our direction, powerful eruptions of radiation and plasma from our star can strike our planet to supercharge Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, effectively hitting a global 'reset' button on much of our #ModernTechnology. A sufficiently intense bombardment could raise a #Geomagneticstorm that would push satellites out of orbit, short out submarine cables that suture together the #Internet and plunge the world into darkness with massive #blackouts from collapsed #PowerGrids. Yet this past weekend, when one of the strongest solar outbursts in 20 years blasted our planet, we managed to emerge unscathed thanks to years of careful public and private planning.
"The storm has ebbed, although the solar region that sparked it has since spat out additional monstrous flares—fortunately no longer targeted at Earth because of the sun’s spin [which will change in a short time, as that spot will once again be Earth-facing]. But while we’ve passed our biggest test yet, experts say now is not the time to let down our guard: the question of more cataclysmic solar activity isn’t a matter of 'if' but 'when.'
"'This is a success story,' says Shawn Dahl, a space weather forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s [#NOAA] Space Weather Prediction Center (#SWPC) in Boulder, Colo., but the weekend’s storm was 'nowhere close' to the strength of more powerful known historical events. Is it time to put our feet up? 'Heck no,' he says.
"On May 8, after ground- and space-based telescopes detected multiple explosive outbursts from the sun headed for Earth, the SWPC issued a warning of an imminent severe space weather event. At least seven of these outbursts, known as coronal mass ejections, or #CMEs, walloped our planet with billions of tons of solar plasma—an interplanetary punch that left Earth’s magnetic field ringing and made the upper atmosphere swell, almost as if bruised. The resulting geomagnetic storm was the most severe since 2003. It posed potentially grave dangers to global infrastructure while also bathing much of the world in achingly beautiful #auroral displays.
"At present, it’s difficult to say just how close we came to catastrophe because many companies— from grid controllers to satellite operators—do not like to reveal information on how a geomagnetic storm affected them, says Daniel Welling, a climate and space scientist at the University of Michigan. "'They don’t want to look like they’re vulnerable,' he says. 'Satellite operators have to insure their spacecraft, and that can be very expensive.' Yet various scattered reports are already offering some insight into the storm’s disruptive effects. Flight trackers showed airlines rerouting planes to avoid Earth’s poles, where crews and passengers would have been exposed to worrisome spikes in #CosmicRadiation from the storm. Transpower, New Zealand’s state-owned enterprise running that nation’s electric power, said in a statement that it had preemptively 'switched off some circuits across the country on Saturday [May 11],' and as a result, there was 'no impact on New Zealand’s electricity supply.' In Minnesota, the firm Minnesota Power opened capacitor banks to deal with possible effects from the storm. Similar precautions were likely taken at other power grids around the world, too, although the lack of information makes it 'tremendously' difficult to know how effective those measures were, Welling says.
"Geomagnetic storms can also play havoc with signals from #GPS satellites, and multiple farmers reported issues with GPS-guided farming equipment over the weekend. In South Dakota, one farmer’s tractor started #DrivingInCircles during the storm, and multiple farmers reported outages on social media. 'Our GPS on both the planter and the strip tiller were absolutely bonkers today,' one commenter wrote on Reddit. 'I saw this post and looked ... no GPS,' said another. LandMark Implement, a John Deere dealership based in Nebraska and Kansas, texted its customers an advisory to 'turn off' GPS devices on their farming equipment. 'The base stations were sending out corrections that have been affected by the geomagnetic storm and were causing drastic shifts in the field,' the company noted in an online post. LandMark declined to comment further when contacted.
"The storm posed hazards in space as well. Seven astronauts on the International Space Station were mostly safe from the storm’s effects, #NASA said, but did have to take some precautions. 'The crew was told to avoid lower-shielded areas of the space station out of an abundance of caution,' says Sandra Jones, a spokesperson for NASA’s Johnson Space Center. 'Certain areas provide less protection from radiation, such as the air lock, while other areas, such as crew quarters, provide enhanced protection. The crew was never in any danger, and the energy levels have since decreased.' Other satellite operators experienced greater difficulties. One company in the U.K., Sen, which streams 4K video from a satellite in low-Earth orbit, chose to power down its spacecraft for four days to prevent any damage from the storm, such as fried circuit boards or electronic failures. 'It was in an idle mode,' says Marcin Bujar, spacecraft operations lead at Sen. 'We just kept the bare minimum on—the flight computer and radio receiver.' This prevented the satellite from carrying out some tasks, including planned observations of flooding in South America and wildfires in Canada. 'It definitely had an impact,' Bujar says."
Read more:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-strongest-solar-storm-in-20-years-did-little-damage-but-worse-space/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
#SolarCycle25 #CarringtonEvent #SolarFlares #Auroras

#solarstorm #spaceweather #moderntechnology #geomagneticstorm #internet #blackouts
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2026-03-27 · 20:02 UTC

Cryptworm – Infectious Pathological Waste Review By Steel Druhm
UK disgusting death metal fiends Cryptworm have been quite prolific since 2022. Featuring members of Cryptic Shift and Rothadas, their Spewing Mephitic Putridity debut was a nauseating dose of raw sewagecore that made Autopsy seem hygienic by comparison. They followed that up barely a year later with Oozing Radioactive Vomition, and things felt a bit rushed and less impactful. They wisely took some time off thereafter, and now they return with third outing, Infectious Pathological Waste. While their overall approach hasn’t changed much from album to album, the quality of the writing has varied. This time, it feels like they put a bit more thought into the compositions, and some of the vile charm of the debut resurfaces through the slime and scuzz. Nothing does the heart good quite like seeing a happy Cryptworm!
Opener “Gallons of Molten Hominal Goo” greets you like a decaying old friend, and the gruesome, repulsive sounds contain the distinct aroma of early Carcass. This lump of excrement could have appeared on Symphonies of Sickness and fit like a maggot in a gunshot wound. The riffs are fairly rudimentary but have weight, and the vocals by Hanyi Tibor (Rothadas) are a cross between an industrial garbage disposal and a frat-house beer-belching contest. They are fucking disgusting, purulent, and utterly incomprehensible, but damn if they aren’t entertaining. “Maimed and Gutted” is a standout, going for a frantic thrashy panic attack with Cannibal Corpse-isms buried in the basement. It’s a road-grader of a brutal death song that veers into slam territory at times, and the riffs are greasy, sticky, and bellicose. My favorite macabre ditty is “Embedded with Parasitic Larvae,” where, intentionally or not, Tibor sounds like an undead version of the Swedish Chef from The Muppet Show. I cannot tell you why this enhances my enjoyment as much as it does, but fuck yes, Chef!
Infectious Pathological Waste by Cryptworm
On “Drowning in Purulent Excrementia,” they go extra slammy, and kitman Jamie Wintle starts to hit something that should be the pong snare, but it sounds like he’s beating on a skull or a femur. It’s weird, but I kinda like it, and it’s way better than that godawful PONG-PONG-PONG sound some tech and slam bands foist on you. Not every track is a sure-fire hit though, with “Gastrointestinal Seepage” feeling a bit too leaden and lethargic, though I appreciate Tibor’s extra nasty vocals where he seems to be coughing up a hairball full of razor blades and asbestos. I could complain that this feels like a very one-note album, but what death metal album isn’t really? At a tight 32 minutes, it goes by fast enough, though several tracks do have bloat issues that crimp enjoyment. The style Cryptworm opt to play necessitates keeping things in a 3-4 minute window, and when they push further, things get ropey and dopey.
Tibor does a tremendous, unpleasant job on vocals, sounding completely inhuman at all times. His unbelievably cartoonish subterranean croaks are a thing of hideous beauty, and I can’t get enough of them. His guitarwork is also to be applauded, borrowing the most objectionable bits of gristle from Autopsy, Cannibal Corpse, and Incantation to fuel the Cryptworm diet. Some of the leads are quite hooky, and I especially love the big beefy power chugs that dot the landscape. As on Oozing Radioactive Vomition, however, the songwriting can be inconsistent, and they don’t always know when enough is enough. There are some sick burners here to aggravate the savage altered beast, but a few tracks feel underbaked and deliver weaker tentacle slaps.
Cryptworm are a band I can’t help but root for as I root around in their repellant leavings, but I want them to be MOAR consistently deadly with their offal hammer. There’s plenty of fun stuff on Infectious Pathological Waste to marinate in, and it all reeks of the slaughterhouse. When it’s good, it’s rurl good. When it’s just okay, it’s still pretty fookin’ entertaining. Someday these chaps are gonna get their maggot larvae in a row and then, watch out! Until then, there are worse ways to kill brain cells than these odious odes to the grave.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Me Saco Un Ojo
Websites: cryptworm.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/cryptworm | instagram.com/cryptwormofficial
Releases Worldwide: March 27th, 2026
#2026 #Autopsy #CannibalCorpse #Carcass #CrypticShift #Cryptworm #DeathMetal #InfectiousPathologicalWaste #Mar26 #MeSacoUnOjoRecords #Review #Reviews #Rothadás #SymphoniesOfSickness #UKMetal

#autopsy #carcass #cryptworm #deathmetal #infectiouspathologicalwaste #mar26
Nona Rose @[email protected] · 2023-01-26 · 04:48 UTC

Pro tip for anyone who wants to freak a potential love interest out within 24 hours of contact and before you’ve even met them:
1. Tell them they are beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, etc at EVERY opportunity.
2. Tell them you want to be with them forever.
3. Demand lots of photos of them.
4. Talk about moving you and your child/ren to the other side of the planet to be with them.
5. Tell them how much you missed them even though you spoke less than 12 hours ago.
Oh, sorry … that’s pro tips for catfish and scammers. My bad.
#ProTip #DatingTips #catfish #scammer #RomanceScam #scam #WhereAreTheGenuineGuys

#protip #datingtips #catfish #scammer #romancescam #scam
Doom Disco! @[email protected] · 2024-10-26 · 11:46 UTC

#TheHiddenIsle, a #Tarot #TTRPG of Sorcery and Adventure! No, this is not a limited edition. I still need to familiarise myself with it, but fortunately the beautiful #ruleslight rulebook has less than 200 pages! There are no annoying endless lists of weapons or spells.The focus is on #storytelling.

#thehiddenisle #tarot #ttrpg #ruleslight #storytelling
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-12-29 · 13:06 UTC
Sentynel’s and Twelve’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Steel Druhm
Sentynel
It’s been a couple of years since I had to start my AotY thoughts with “oof, what a year,” but oof, what a year. One thing after another piled up for months on end. I had some early success, actually writing reviews, but that left me almost no time to consume any other new music. A slowly escalating personal crisis then led to my neither writing nor consuming any new music for months. I began to fear that I genuinely wouldn’t be able to listen to enough to assemble a list—or that the server would implode at an inopportune time and I’d struggle to fix it. Fortunately, I was able to stay on top of server wobbles, despite the best efforts of endless AI scraper bots.1 A couple of months ago, I started managing new music again, and thus, a list emerged. I am moderately optimistic for 2026, at least on a personal level. (I offer no such optimism for the general state of the world.)
While this hasn’t been a particularly strong year for me, it’s hard to tell if that’s the year’s fault or just mine. My most common gripe has been unevenness: there have been a lot of records—including some I’ve ultimately loved—that have annoyed me through failing to sustain their heights throughout. Nonetheless, everything on my list belongs there. This year’s primary theme appears to be Angry Cello Guy, with a suspicious five entries on my list prominently featuring cellos or other bowed string instruments. Guitars are so 2024. There are multiple records here that are genre-hopping, experimental, and hard to classify. Otherwise, this is a pretty typical year for me, with post-metal heavily represented, several prog-adjacent pieces, and no surprisingly brvtal contenders, despite trying a few. Ah, well, next year.
My year has also kept me from getting to know this year’s intake of new writers as well as I’d like, but I’m sure they’re all lovely people with only somewhat questionable taste. To the brave crew of editors and promo jockeys, you have my thanks for your endless work; to the retiring veterans, please enjoy your sabbaticals without incident; and to the readers, long may you continue resisting the urge to let AI summarise our writing.

#ish. Scardust // Souls – Souls took a lot longer to grow on me than Strangers, and it’s more uneven than its predecessor. But the highs are fabulous. Noa Gruman is still preternaturally good on vocals. If the whole record were as good as the “Touch of Life” suite with her and Ross Jennings, this would be, no exaggeration, #1. Alas, while there are a couple of other bangers (“Unreachable”), much of the rest of Souls just doesn’t impress me, in that awkward sort of way you get when it’s really good and it feels unfair to moan about it too much, but you know they can do so much better.
#10. Jo Quail // Notan – Quail remains one of the most mesmerising live acts I’ve ever seen. Between the strength of her modern classical compositions and the frankly magical way she weaves them together live, armed with only a cello and a loop pedal, her shows are a must-see event. Fittingly, I saw Notan performed live before I heard the recording, but it’s worth it in recorded form too. The nature of loop pedal based composition lends itself to the sort of slow build that makes for really good post-rock/metal. Each piece goes in a pleasingly different direction and experiments with different additions to her sound palette. That she can do them live solo as well is merely the icing on the cake.
#9. Mares of Thrace // The Loss – I wrote most of a review for this album at release,2 but never quite got it over the line. I found it so raw it was hard to listen to. As my difficult period got worse, I just gave up on being able to listen to it at all, and with it any hope of finishing even a woefully late review. Where The Exile was immediately catchy and driving, The Loss’s immediacy is its anguish, and that was all I could hear. Mares of Thrace are already hard to genre pigeonhole, and The Loss is all over the place, spanning sludge, noise, prog, and doom, with trad inflections. I’m actually glad I didn’t manage to get the review done at the time. Coming back to it for list season, I appreciate it a lot more easily than I did at the time. The catchiness and driving energy are still there, but the additional stylistic variety makes it more interesting. The anguish adds weight and impact. The catharsis of the final track is well earned. It’s still a hard listen, but it’s a rewarding one. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a TYMHM out!3
#8. Black Narcissus // There Lingers One Who’s Long Forgotten – This is just gorgeous. The best post-rock does an awful lot with very little, and Black Narcissus’ unhurried drums and bass do an absolutely astonishing amount. There’s no way something so minimalist and so languid should be able to sustain an hour of music. I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely beautiful There Lingers One Who’s Long Forgotten is, and its hour-long runtime just floats by. This is the epitome of “do one thing and do it well” as a philosophy.
#7. Fallujah // Xenotaph – Fallujah are a long time big name I had begun to appreciate more in the last couple of years, after seeing them live. They still hadn’t really clicked for me recorded, but Xenotaph changed that. Tech death’s curse is sterility, and the warmth of this record lifts Fallujah out of that trap. It’s, paradoxically, at once dreamy and bluntly impactful. The writing is as strong on melody as it is on technicality. It seems slightly redundant to say this about a record that’s on my year-end list, but I really enjoy the immediate experience of listening to Xenotaph. There’s something intensely satisfying about the smoothness: who says heavy music has to be abrasive? The production is still a sticking point, though.
#6. Concrete Age // Awaken the Gods – Awaken the Gods is just a lot of fun. There’s not enough metal drawing on the instruments and composition of folk music from the Caucasus and the steppes. It reminds me a lot of Mongol, but with better and more varied folk instrumentation. There’s a couple of songs that are a bit more straight thrash with folk instruments, which are less exciting, but it doesn’t detract from the rest of the record. It also delivers further proof of my theory that folk metal covers of terrible pop songs are the pinnacle of music. My go-to for when I wanted something to uncomplicatedly bang my head to.
#5. Calva Louise // Edge of the Abyss – Calva Louise are what happens when somebody spots an “all of the above” button under “genre” on the band creation screen and their curiosity gets the better of them. They are what you get if you take the Diablo Swing Orchestra and remove their classical instruments and sense of restraint. Something this absurd could only ever have been terrific or terrible. Obviously, this is terrific. AMG called it wild, unpredictable, and addictive, and it certainly is. They sound like nothing else I’ve ever listened to, and manage to be dangerously catchy on top of it. This hit in the middle of my difficult period, and it was nearly the only thing I listened to for a month. A teeny sense of easing off the gas on the last few songs is the only weakness. Spectacular.
#4. Völur & Cares // Breathless Spirit – Odd, unsettling, pretty, experimental, captivating—Breathless Spirit is a weird album. Violin and viola occupy the sonic space where you’d typically find lead and rhythm guitars. The composition wanders through modern classical, atmoblack, noise, jazz, folk, doom, and more. Actually, the main textural comparison I would draw here is to Hierophant Violent, though Breathless Spirit is far less single-minded in direction. Many of the more ambient sections, and some of the clean vocals, remind me of the build-up stretches of that album, and likewise, there’s some similarity in the crushing crescendos. Just in case you thought you knew where this was going, the other comparisons I’m going to draw are to fellow Canadians The Night Watch and Thrawsunblat. Of everything on the list, this is the one at highest risk of me feeling like I placed it too low in a year’s time—I found it late and it could grow on me further. A truly fascinating record.
#3. Messa // The Spin – While I’ve been a fan of Messa since their first record and through all their stylistic exploration, The Spin really blew me away. Sara Bianchin sounds fantastic, and there’s a wonderful allure to the tone of the rest of the band. Others have commented on The Spin feeling a bit like a collection of songs rather than a cohesive record, which is probably true and probably kept this from the top spot… but the songs are so damn good it’s hard to care that much. I came back to this a few times, even during the worst few months of the year, and had half of it stuck in my head half the time. At one point, I spent several days unable to get the opening riff of the opening track out of my head, and it doesn’t get any less addictive from there. In the last couple of months, I’ve had to actively resist putting it on at times to make sure I give other, less immediate records enough listening time.
#2. Psychonaut // World Maker – Yeah, so I’m a sucker for the kind of atmospheric post/prog metal played by bands like The Ocean or Dvne. Here is this year’s winner in that space. I’ve wanted to like Psychonaut in the past more than I actually have, but World Maker finally clicked for me in a big way. It’s intricate, catchy, in places techy, in others psychedelic. The songs unfold in interesting ways, and listening to it feels like exploring. From the buildup of the opening track, I knew this would be exactly what I wanted in this sort of music. And as Ken wrote in his review, the more personal dimension to World Maker’s themes elevates it (with some similarities to Pelagial’s place as the best Ocean album). A record that rewards time and attention.
#1. Shepherds of Cassini // In Thrall to Heresy – In Thrall to Heresy’s victory here was not exactly inevitable when I reviewed it back in February, but it was certainly likely. The glorious return of a niche band I loved and thought lost? It would have taken something spectacular to upset it. I listened to this all year, through the difficult period, and kept on loving it. For all that retro prog is a bit of an oxymoron, 00s-early 10s prog is one of my favorite eras of music. (There was a lot of rabbling in the comments about me not having explicitly compared them to Riverside and Tool, so to be explicit, if you liked Riverside through to SoNGS, you’ll like this. They’re far less pretentious than Tool.) In Thrall is a fresh enough take to feel like progression, not a throwback. Its violin leads add variety (as well as claiming the Angry Cello Guy crown for the year). Shepherds’ songwriting has matured in the last decade. Their instruments sound pleasingly chunky. A post-y twist presses additional musical buttons for me. One could only make this more laser-targeted at my specific musical niche by somehow adding industrial bluegrass.4 Don’t make me wait 10 years for the next record, please.
Honorable Mentions:
- 1914 // Viribus Unitis – Brutal and moving, this is some really good blackened death/doom. It’s not as good as Die Urkatastrophe, though—sorry, 1914 fans.
- Aephanemer // Utopie – The spectre of AMG’s law of diminishing recordings begins to haunt Aephanemer, for what is Utopie if not Aephanemer sounding like Aephanemer? It’s damn good, though.
- Ellereve // Umbra – Sad-girl post-metal? Yes please.
- Howling Giant // Crucible & Ruin – Just some really good stoner/psych.
- Net-Ruiner // Prototype – The synthwave/metal cross ends up being a little too much of a gimmick to land a proper list spot, but nonetheless an absolute blast.
- Raphael Weinroth-Browne // Lifeblood – I know I made an Angry Cello Guy joke up there, but it turns out you can, in fact, have too much cello. Weinroth-Browne’s multi-layered modern classical composition (in both senses) of cellos is always impressive and regularly emotive. Had Lifeblood been edited down to keep, say, the best 40 minutes of its current 60, this would have been up there in my list somewhere. Alas.
- Various Artists // KPop Demon Hunters – Relegated to HMs because this isn’t an album I like so much as it’s an album containing six songs I absolutely adore, and six others, but fuck me, the main cast songs (less “Soda Pop”) are bangers.
Songs o’ the Year:
- Calva Louise – “Impeccable”
- Concrete Age – “Boro Boro”
- Howling Giant – “Scepter and Scythe”
- HUNTR/X – “Golden”
- HUNTR/X – “Takedown”
- HUNTR/X – “What It Sounds Like”
- Messa – “Fire on the Roof”
- Saja Boys – “Your Idol”
- Scardust – “Touch of Life” suite
- Shepherds of Cassini – “Abyss”
- Tiktaalika – “Fault Lines:
Twelve
I am so behind on writing this. Behind on writing in general, really, but I’m writing this introduction very late by Angry Metal Standards®.5 Over the year, my writing for this blog waned notably, but I’m still very proud of my output this year, and discovered some delightful gems thanks to this blog and my privileged position to write for it. As is traditional, I want to extend my sincere thanks to my co-writers for their fantastic camaraderie and to the editors who allow me to keep writing here, probably against their better judgment. Everything changes all the time, but feeling right at home here stays the same.
Last year I claimed that, by any measure, 2024 was the worst year of my life, and I’m happy to say that remains true this year. Interestingly, however, I listened to much less music, and, more to the point, liked less music. In the past few months, I’ve been asking my co-writers here to recommend the music they think will top their own lists, and I just… kept not liking them. For some reason, almost nothing has been sticking musically. That’s not a comment on my colleagues’ tastes, of course—the writers here have an astounding talent for finding some of the best music there is. But I’ve been struggling to keep up.
So this year, I’m keeping things simple and writing about the twelve albums I liked best in 2025. Occasionally, when we talk about our end-of-year listings, there’s an idea that some albums need to be of a certain quality to be “worthy” of a top-ten (or top-top) spot, but if I start thinking that way, this list is never going to materialize. So I’ve gone with my gut and am now going to talk your ear off about the music I personally liked the most.
All of which is to say, I think my list is weird this year. I did my best! And I’m happy with it. But it’s weird.
Thanks for reading my nonsense in 2025—it really does mean a lot. Let’s all do it again next year!

#ish. Dawnwalker // The Between – A single-song album is such an ambitious undertaking, and I really can’t express enough how impressive it is that “The Between” feels like an actual half-hour song. Dawnwalker is so impressive on The Between, and the composition is truly a work of art. It’s grown on me since I reviewed it in October, and I just have to highlight the amazing songwriting from Mark Norgate and Dawnwalker before I dive into my list proper.
#10. Calva Louise // Edge of the Abyss – Let the weird begin! Edge of the Abyss is not something I thought for a second would make this list when Angry Metal Guy wrote about it, but it’s wormed its way into my head and heart. Deceptively catchy, a lot cleverer than it first appears, and filled to the brim with energy, Edge of the Abyss is a fun, memorable, and surprisingly relatable slice of… some kind of metal. I really don’t know how to categorize it, and I’m not sure how to get it out of my head either. Great album.
#9. Nechochwen // Spelewithiipi – Continuing with what may be another unusual pick, Nechochwen’s Spelewithiipi is not something I considered for this list straightaway. I have to admit, though, it has been a comforting listen that I’ve returned to often over the course of the year. It is well-composed, deceptively complex, and easy to spin again and again. On days I’ve felt low, there’s been a magic in Spelewithiipi that does wonders in keeping me well.
# 8. Völur & Cares //Breathless Spirit – Breathless Spirit is such an impressive album. For one thing, you’d never, ever guess there isn’t a lead guitar, despite the fact that Bates’s violin is a significant part of Völur’s unique character and spirit. As doom metal, Breathless Spirit dominates; it is powerful, mournful, wry, and cathartic. It’s a truly fascinating display of music, one that reveals new character every time you listen.
#7. Falling Leaves // The Silence That Binds Us – Speaking of doom metal, The Silence That Binds Us tells us that sometimes taking a break can be a good thing. It’s been thirteen years since Falling Leaves released their debut, and their sophomore feels like it had been simmering for a while. Expert compositions, passionate performances, and a huge atmosphere contribute to what I thought was “the” doom metal release of the year. There is so much care and attention in The Silence That Binds Us, so much feeling from every player, so much love in the production and master—even the cover art is gorgeous.
#6. Raphael Weinroth-Browne // Lifeblood – I didn’t expect Lifeblood to creep its way up here the way it has, but I’ve been listening to it more and more lately and realized I actually like it a lot more than a lot of other stuff. Raphael Weinroth-Browne’s compositions are stunning, and the more you listen to them, the better they get. For an instrumental, non-metal project, Lifeblood conveys so much meaning, so much emotion, and feels heavy for what it is. It’s a powerful work and a lovely one too—exactly what we’ve come to expect from as talented a cellist and composer as Weinroth-Browne.
#5. Aephanemer // Utopie – The direction Aephanemer’s music has taken since they first appeared on this blog with Prokopton is fascinating. Each release since has been a touch less aggressive and notably broader in terms of its composition and ambition. Utopie, I feel, balances these nuances the best—it’s an epic, sprawling album that reaches high and grasps onto something exciting. There is a level of care and attention to detail to Utopie that rewards repeat listens, and I still feel like I’m getting more and more into it as I listen. Who knows, maybe I’ll regret this “low” placement before long; this one’s a grower.
#4. Amorphis // Borderlands – Amorphis don’t need much introduction at this point, but lately I haven’t been very invested in their releases. It can be tough, I imagine, being such an iconic band with such a recognizable sound. But Borderlands feels fresh to me; an old formula done right, modernized reasonably enough to stand out, and with the gusto of a much newer band. Incidentally, this was also the first CD I’ve purchased in years—an impromptu grab at a record store I’d forgotten existed—and the bonus tracks therein are amazing additions (“Rowan and the Cloud” is a delightful closer, more so, I would argue, than “Despair”). It’s nice to be enamored by Amorphis again. They seem to still know what they’re doing.
#3. Saor // Amidst the Ruins – I’ve slept on Saor in the past, but Amidst the Ruins is an amazing album. Rarely is black metal—atmospheric black metal, no less—so impassioned, but I’ve never wanted to visit Scotland so much as the first time I heard “Rebirth” at the end of my first listen. It’s hard to quantify what makes Amidst the Ruins such a special record, really. The blend of black metal and folk metal isn’t new, nor is the style in which Marshall writes so well. But listening to Saor, you can’t help but feel his pride and awe for a homeland you may never have seen yourself. Amidst the Ruins crept its way into my rotations again and again throughout the year, and it’s been the most pleasant musical surprise of 2025 for me by far.
#2. Apocalypse Orchestra // A Plague Upon Thee – I really thought I’d give Apocalypse Orchestra my top spot, but admittedly, I thought that before I’d even heard it. The way these guys blend medieval themes with folk, doom, and metal is genuinely fascinating and incredibly well done. Add to the list that they perform thorough research and the music is educational on top of it all—what’s not to love? A Plague Upon Thee was my most-anticipated album of the year, and Apocalypse Orchestra really delivered, with sweeping epics telling takes of historic darkness and endearing humanity. Everything from the bagpipes to the choirs sounds amazing, and while I did have a couple of reservations initially, the simple truth is that this music is so well up my alley—and is performed so well too—that I was always bound to love it enough for this list. I can only hope to uncover more music as wonderfully niche as this again.
#1. 1914 // Viribus Unitis – I have not listened to every item of music released in 2025, but I still think I can say that none could be more powerful than 1914’s Viribus Unitis. I listened to nothing heavier, nothing more memorable, and nothing so relevant as 1914’s story of a Ukrainian soldier caught up in the mania of the First World War. From battle-frenzied bloodlust to heartbreaking captivity, his story follows 1914’s relentless message of the horrors of war. In the past, I’ve praised 1914 for the honesty in their bleak outlook on their namesake war, and Viribus Unitis could not have done a better job in following that idea. The songs range from brutal to cathartic; every guest musician elevates their song, and the choir is a brilliant way to balance trademark heaviness with emotional impact. Viribus Unitis is the most impactful album I’ve listened to in a long, long time, and I admire every musician involved for their part in that. Viribus Unitis was my top album for 2025 the moment I finished the first spin.
Honorable Mention
- Marko Hietala // Roses from the Deep – I’ve looked back at my review of Roses from the Deep a couple of times since writing and wondered if my personal admiration for Hietala’s career made me over-excited to review it. Is it possible I rated it highly simply because it’s such a fascinating culmination of the career of a musician I like? Either way, I’m keeping to the course—this was a fun listen in a year where I didn’t find so many upbeat albums to enjoy, and I keep coming back to it in bits and pieces depending on my mood; it’s a diverse exploration, and you can tell everyone had a good fun creating it.
Song of the Year
This was a hard one. There are so many powerful, emotional songs littered throughout this list—especially on Viribus Unitis, where the passion is particularly raw. But in keeping with the theme of what I personally found most affecting, I just keep coming back to this little gem on Autumn Tears’s latest. “Martyrdom – Catharsis (Where Gods Go to Die)” has a strangely compelling quality that kept me coming back again and again since I first reviewed Crown of the Clairvoyant. The singing, choirs, organ—really, everything about the composition is mesmerizing. I don’t imagine a lot of people will have this one on their year-end playlists. It’s a niche, quiet little song, but it’s wormed its way into my heart and speaks strongly to how I’ve felt about 2025 in a way I can’t quite describe.
Crown of the Clairvoyant by Autumn Tears
#1914 #2025 #Aephanemer #Amorphis #ApocalypseOrchestra #BlackNarcissus #CalvaLouise #ConcreteAge #Dawnwalker #Ellereve #FallingLeaves #Fallujah #HowlingGiant #JoQuail #Lists #MaresOfThrace #MarkoHietala #Messa #Nechochwen #NetRuiner #Psychonaut #RaphaelWeinrothBrowne #Saor #Scardust #SentynelSAndTwelveSTopTenIshOf2025 #ShepherdsOfCassini #VölurCares
#aephanemer #amorphis #apocalypseorchestra #blacknarcissus #calvalouise #concreteage
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-12-29 · 13:06 UTC
Sentynel’s and Twelve’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Steel Druhm
Sentynel
It’s been a couple of years since I had to start my AotY thoughts with “oof, what a year,” but oof, what a year. One thing after another piled up for months on end. I had some early success, actually writing reviews, but that left me almost no time to consume any other new music. A slowly escalating personal crisis then led to my neither writing nor consuming any new music for months. I began to fear that I genuinely wouldn’t be able to listen to enough to assemble a list—or that the server would implode at an inopportune time and I’d struggle to fix it. Fortunately, I was able to stay on top of server wobbles, despite the best efforts of endless AI scraper bots.1 A couple of months ago, I started managing new music again, and thus, a list emerged. I am moderately optimistic for 2026, at least on a personal level. (I offer no such optimism for the general state of the world.)
While this hasn’t been a particularly strong year for me, it’s hard to tell if that’s the year’s fault or just mine. My most common gripe has been unevenness: there have been a lot of records—including some I’ve ultimately loved—that have annoyed me through failing to sustain their heights throughout. Nonetheless, everything on my list belongs there. This year’s primary theme appears to be Angry Cello Guy, with a suspicious five entries on my list prominently featuring cellos or other bowed string instruments. Guitars are so 2024. There are multiple records here that are genre-hopping, experimental, and hard to classify. Otherwise, this is a pretty typical year for me, with post-metal heavily represented, several prog-adjacent pieces, and no surprisingly brvtal contenders, despite trying a few. Ah, well, next year.
My year has also kept me from getting to know this year’s intake of new writers as well as I’d like, but I’m sure they’re all lovely people with only somewhat questionable taste. To the brave crew of editors and promo jockeys, you have my thanks for your endless work; to the retiring veterans, please enjoy your sabbaticals without incident; and to the readers, long may you continue resisting the urge to let AI summarise our writing.

#ish. Scardust // Souls – Souls took a lot longer to grow on me than Strangers, and it’s more uneven than its predecessor. But the highs are fabulous. Noa Gruman is still preternaturally good on vocals. If the whole record were as good as the “Touch of Life” suite with her and Ross Jennings, this would be, no exaggeration, #1. Alas, while there are a couple of other bangers (“Unreachable”), much of the rest of Souls just doesn’t impress me, in that awkward sort of way you get when it’s really good and it feels unfair to moan about it too much, but you know they can do so much better.
#10. Jo Quail // Notan – Quail remains one of the most mesmerising live acts I’ve ever seen. Between the strength of her modern classical compositions and the frankly magical way she weaves them together live, armed with only a cello and a loop pedal, her shows are a must-see event. Fittingly, I saw Notan performed live before I heard the recording, but it’s worth it in recorded form too. The nature of loop pedal based composition lends itself to the sort of slow build that makes for really good post-rock/metal. Each piece goes in a pleasingly different direction and experiments with different additions to her sound palette. That she can do them live solo as well is merely the icing on the cake.
#9. Mares of Thrace // The Loss – I wrote most of a review for this album at release,2 but never quite got it over the line. I found it so raw it was hard to listen to. As my difficult period got worse, I just gave up on being able to listen to it at all, and with it any hope of finishing even a woefully late review. Where The Exile was immediately catchy and driving, The Loss’s immediacy is its anguish, and that was all I could hear. Mares of Thrace are already hard to genre pigeonhole, and The Loss is all over the place, spanning sludge, noise, prog, and doom, with trad inflections. I’m actually glad I didn’t manage to get the review done at the time. Coming back to it for list season, I appreciate it a lot more easily than I did at the time. The catchiness and driving energy are still there, but the additional stylistic variety makes it more interesting. The anguish adds weight and impact. The catharsis of the final track is well earned. It’s still a hard listen, but it’s a rewarding one. Who knows, maybe I’ll even get a TYMHM out!3
#8. Black Narcissus // There Lingers One Who’s Long Forgotten – This is just gorgeous. The best post-rock does an awful lot with very little, and Black Narcissus’ unhurried drums and bass do an absolutely astonishing amount. There’s no way something so minimalist and so languid should be able to sustain an hour of music. I cannot emphasise enough how absolutely beautiful There Lingers One Who’s Long Forgotten is, and its hour-long runtime just floats by. This is the epitome of “do one thing and do it well” as a philosophy.
#7. Fallujah // Xenotaph – Fallujah are a long time big name I had begun to appreciate more in the last couple of years, after seeing them live. They still hadn’t really clicked for me recorded, but Xenotaph changed that. Tech death’s curse is sterility, and the warmth of this record lifts Fallujah out of that trap. It’s, paradoxically, at once dreamy and bluntly impactful. The writing is as strong on melody as it is on technicality. It seems slightly redundant to say this about a record that’s on my year-end list, but I really enjoy the immediate experience of listening to Xenotaph. There’s something intensely satisfying about the smoothness: who says heavy music has to be abrasive? The production is still a sticking point, though.
#6. Concrete Age // Awaken the Gods – Awaken the Gods is just a lot of fun. There’s not enough metal drawing on the instruments and composition of folk music from the Caucasus and the steppes. It reminds me a lot of Mongol, but with better and more varied folk instrumentation. There’s a couple of songs that are a bit more straight thrash with folk instruments, which are less exciting, but it doesn’t detract from the rest of the record. It also delivers further proof of my theory that folk metal covers of terrible pop songs are the pinnacle of music. My go-to for when I wanted something to uncomplicatedly bang my head to.
#5. Calva Louise // Edge of the Abyss – Calva Louise are what happens when somebody spots an “all of the above” button under “genre” on the band creation screen and their curiosity gets the better of them. They are what you get if you take the Diablo Swing Orchestra and remove their classical instruments and sense of restraint. Something this absurd could only ever have been terrific or terrible. Obviously, this is terrific. AMG called it wild, unpredictable, and addictive, and it certainly is. They sound like nothing else I’ve ever listened to, and manage to be dangerously catchy on top of it. This hit in the middle of my difficult period, and it was nearly the only thing I listened to for a month. A teeny sense of easing off the gas on the last few songs is the only weakness. Spectacular.
#4. Völur & Cares // Breathless Spirit – Odd, unsettling, pretty, experimental, captivating—Breathless Spirit is a weird album. Violin and viola occupy the sonic space where you’d typically find lead and rhythm guitars. The composition wanders through modern classical, atmoblack, noise, jazz, folk, doom, and more. Actually, the main textural comparison I would draw here is to Hierophant Violent, though Breathless Spirit is far less single-minded in direction. Many of the more ambient sections, and some of the clean vocals, remind me of the build-up stretches of that album, and likewise, there’s some similarity in the crushing crescendos. Just in case you thought you knew where this was going, the other comparisons I’m going to draw are to fellow Canadians The Night Watch and Thrawsunblat. Of everything on the list, this is the one at highest risk of me feeling like I placed it too low in a year’s time—I found it late and it could grow on me further. A truly fascinating record.
#3. Messa // The Spin – While I’ve been a fan of Messa since their first record and through all their stylistic exploration, The Spin really blew me away. Sara Bianchin sounds fantastic, and there’s a wonderful allure to the tone of the rest of the band. Others have commented on The Spin feeling a bit like a collection of songs rather than a cohesive record, which is probably true and probably kept this from the top spot… but the songs are so damn good it’s hard to care that much. I came back to this a few times, even during the worst few months of the year, and had half of it stuck in my head half the time. At one point, I spent several days unable to get the opening riff of the opening track out of my head, and it doesn’t get any less addictive from there. In the last couple of months, I’ve had to actively resist putting it on at times to make sure I give other, less immediate records enough listening time.
#2. Psychonaut // World Maker – Yeah, so I’m a sucker for the kind of atmospheric post/prog metal played by bands like The Ocean or Dvne. Here is this year’s winner in that space. I’ve wanted to like Psychonaut in the past more than I actually have, but World Maker finally clicked for me in a big way. It’s intricate, catchy, in places techy, in others psychedelic. The songs unfold in interesting ways, and listening to it feels like exploring. From the buildup of the opening track, I knew this would be exactly what I wanted in this sort of music. And as Ken wrote in his review, the more personal dimension to World Maker’s themes elevates it (with some similarities to Pelagial’s place as the best Ocean album). A record that rewards time and attention.
#1. Shepherds of Cassini // In Thrall to Heresy – In Thrall to Heresy’s victory here was not exactly inevitable when I reviewed it back in February, but it was certainly likely. The glorious return of a niche band I loved and thought lost? It would have taken something spectacular to upset it. I listened to this all year, through the difficult period, and kept on loving it. For all that retro prog is a bit of an oxymoron, 00s-early 10s prog is one of my favorite eras of music. (There was a lot of rabbling in the comments about me not having explicitly compared them to Riverside and Tool, so to be explicit, if you liked Riverside through to SoNGS, you’ll like this. They’re far less pretentious than Tool.) In Thrall is a fresh enough take to feel like progression, not a throwback. Its violin leads add variety (as well as claiming the Angry Cello Guy crown for the year). Shepherds’ songwriting has matured in the last decade. Their instruments sound pleasingly chunky. A post-y twist presses additional musical buttons for me. One could only make this more laser-targeted at my specific musical niche by somehow adding industrial bluegrass.4 Don’t make me wait 10 years for the next record, please.
Honorable Mentions:
- 1914 // Viribus Unitis – Brutal and moving, this is some really good blackened death/doom. It’s not as good as Die Urkatastrophe, though—sorry, 1914 fans.
- Aephanemer // Utopie – The spectre of AMG’s law of diminishing recordings begins to haunt Aephanemer, for what is Utopie if not Aephanemer sounding like Aephanemer? It’s damn good, though.
- Ellereve // Umbra – Sad-girl post-metal? Yes please.
- Howling Giant // Crucible & Ruin – Just some really good stoner/psych.
- Net-Ruiner // Prototype – The synthwave/metal cross ends up being a little too much of a gimmick to land a proper list spot, but nonetheless an absolute blast.
- Raphael Weinroth-Browne // Lifeblood – I know I made an Angry Cello Guy joke up there, but it turns out you can, in fact, have too much cello. Weinroth-Browne’s multi-layered modern classical composition (in both senses) of cellos is always impressive and regularly emotive. Had Lifeblood been edited down to keep, say, the best 40 minutes of its current 60, this would have been up there in my list somewhere. Alas.
- Various Artists // KPop Demon Hunters – Relegated to HMs because this isn’t an album I like so much as it’s an album containing six songs I absolutely adore, and six others, but fuck me, the main cast songs (less “Soda Pop”) are bangers.
Songs o’ the Year:
- Calva Louise – “Impeccable”
- Concrete Age – “Boro Boro”
- Howling Giant – “Scepter and Scythe”
- HUNTR/X – “Golden”
- HUNTR/X – “Takedown”
- HUNTR/X – “What It Sounds Like”
- Messa – “Fire on the Roof”
- Saja Boys – “Your Idol”
- Scardust – “Touch of Life” suite
- Shepherds of Cassini – “Abyss”
- Tiktaalika – “Fault Lines:
Twelve
I am so behind on writing this. Behind on writing in general, really, but I’m writing this introduction very late by Angry Metal Standards®.5 Over the year, my writing for this blog waned notably, but I’m still very proud of my output this year, and discovered some delightful gems thanks to this blog and my privileged position to write for it. As is traditional, I want to extend my sincere thanks to my co-writers for their fantastic camaraderie and to the editors who allow me to keep writing here, probably against their better judgment. Everything changes all the time, but feeling right at home here stays the same.
Last year I claimed that, by any measure, 2024 was the worst year of my life, and I’m happy to say that remains true this year. Interestingly, however, I listened to much less music, and, more to the point, liked less music. In the past few months, I’ve been asking my co-writers here to recommend the music they think will top their own lists, and I just… kept not liking them. For some reason, almost nothing has been sticking musically. That’s not a comment on my colleagues’ tastes, of course—the writers here have an astounding talent for finding some of the best music there is. But I’ve been struggling to keep up.
So this year, I’m keeping things simple and writing about the twelve albums I liked best in 2025. Occasionally, when we talk about our end-of-year listings, there’s an idea that some albums need to be of a certain quality to be “worthy” of a top-ten (or top-top) spot, but if I start thinking that way, this list is never going to materialize. So I’ve gone with my gut and am now going to talk your ear off about the music I personally liked the most.
All of which is to say, I think my list is weird this year. I did my best! And I’m happy with it. But it’s weird.
Thanks for reading my nonsense in 2025—it really does mean a lot. Let’s all do it again next year!

#ish. Dawnwalker // The Between – A single-song album is such an ambitious undertaking, and I really can’t express enough how impressive it is that “The Between” feels like an actual half-hour song. Dawnwalker is so impressive on The Between, and the composition is truly a work of art. It’s grown on me since I reviewed it in October, and I just have to highlight the amazing songwriting from Mark Norgate and Dawnwalker before I dive into my list proper.
#10. Calva Louise // Edge of the Abyss – Let the weird begin! Edge of the Abyss is not something I thought for a second would make this list when Angry Metal Guy wrote about it, but it’s wormed its way into my head and heart. Deceptively catchy, a lot cleverer than it first appears, and filled to the brim with energy, Edge of the Abyss is a fun, memorable, and surprisingly relatable slice of… some kind of metal. I really don’t know how to categorize it, and I’m not sure how to get it out of my head either. Great album.
#9. Nechochwen // Spelewithiipi – Continuing with what may be another unusual pick, Nechochwen’s Spelewithiipi is not something I considered for this list straightaway. I have to admit, though, it has been a comforting listen that I’ve returned to often over the course of the year. It is well-composed, deceptively complex, and easy to spin again and again. On days I’ve felt low, there’s been a magic in Spelewithiipi that does wonders in keeping me well.
# 8. Völur & Cares //Breathless Spirit – Breathless Spirit is such an impressive album. For one thing, you’d never, ever guess there isn’t a lead guitar, despite the fact that Bates’s violin is a significant part of Völur’s unique character and spirit. As doom metal, Breathless Spirit dominates; it is powerful, mournful, wry, and cathartic. It’s a truly fascinating display of music, one that reveals new character every time you listen.
#7. Falling Leaves // The Silence That Binds Us – Speaking of doom metal, The Silence That Binds Us tells us that sometimes taking a break can be a good thing. It’s been thirteen years since Falling Leaves released their debut, and their sophomore feels like it had been simmering for a while. Expert compositions, passionate performances, and a huge atmosphere contribute to what I thought was “the” doom metal release of the year. There is so much care and attention in The Silence That Binds Us, so much feeling from every player, so much love in the production and master—even the cover art is gorgeous.
#6. Raphael Weinroth-Browne // Lifeblood – I didn’t expect Lifeblood to creep its way up here the way it has, but I’ve been listening to it more and more lately and realized I actually like it a lot more than a lot of other stuff. Raphael Weinroth-Browne’s compositions are stunning, and the more you listen to them, the better they get. For an instrumental, non-metal project, Lifeblood conveys so much meaning, so much emotion, and feels heavy for what it is. It’s a powerful work and a lovely one too—exactly what we’ve come to expect from as talented a cellist and composer as Weinroth-Browne.
#5. Aephanemer // Utopie – The direction Aephanemer’s music has taken since they first appeared on this blog with Prokopton is fascinating. Each release since has been a touch less aggressive and notably broader in terms of its composition and ambition. Utopie, I feel, balances these nuances the best—it’s an epic, sprawling album that reaches high and grasps onto something exciting. There is a level of care and attention to detail to Utopie that rewards repeat listens, and I still feel like I’m getting more and more into it as I listen. Who knows, maybe I’ll regret this “low” placement before long; this one’s a grower.
#4. Amorphis // Borderlands – Amorphis don’t need much introduction at this point, but lately I haven’t been very invested in their releases. It can be tough, I imagine, being such an iconic band with such a recognizable sound. But Borderlands feels fresh to me; an old formula done right, modernized reasonably enough to stand out, and with the gusto of a much newer band. Incidentally, this was also the first CD I’ve purchased in years—an impromptu grab at a record store I’d forgotten existed—and the bonus tracks therein are amazing additions (“Rowan and the Cloud” is a delightful closer, more so, I would argue, than “Despair”). It’s nice to be enamored by Amorphis again. They seem to still know what they’re doing.
#3. Saor // Amidst the Ruins – I’ve slept on Saor in the past, but Amidst the Ruins is an amazing album. Rarely is black metal—atmospheric black metal, no less—so impassioned, but I’ve never wanted to visit Scotland so much as the first time I heard “Rebirth” at the end of my first listen. It’s hard to quantify what makes Amidst the Ruins such a special record, really. The blend of black metal and folk metal isn’t new, nor is the style in which Marshall writes so well. But listening to Saor, you can’t help but feel his pride and awe for a homeland you may never have seen yourself. Amidst the Ruins crept its way into my rotations again and again throughout the year, and it’s been the most pleasant musical surprise of 2025 for me by far.
#2. Apocalypse Orchestra // A Plague Upon Thee – I really thought I’d give Apocalypse Orchestra my top spot, but admittedly, I thought that before I’d even heard it. The way these guys blend medieval themes with folk, doom, and metal is genuinely fascinating and incredibly well done. Add to the list that they perform thorough research and the music is educational on top of it all—what’s not to love? A Plague Upon Thee was my most-anticipated album of the year, and Apocalypse Orchestra really delivered, with sweeping epics telling takes of historic darkness and endearing humanity. Everything from the bagpipes to the choirs sounds amazing, and while I did have a couple of reservations initially, the simple truth is that this music is so well up my alley—and is performed so well too—that I was always bound to love it enough for this list. I can only hope to uncover more music as wonderfully niche as this again.
#1. 1914 // Viribus Unitis – I have not listened to every item of music released in 2025, but I still think I can say that none could be more powerful than 1914’s Viribus Unitis. I listened to nothing heavier, nothing more memorable, and nothing so relevant as 1914’s story of a Ukrainian soldier caught up in the mania of the First World War. From battle-frenzied bloodlust to heartbreaking captivity, his story follows 1914’s relentless message of the horrors of war. In the past, I’ve praised 1914 for the honesty in their bleak outlook on their namesake war, and Viribus Unitis could not have done a better job in following that idea. The songs range from brutal to cathartic; every guest musician elevates their song, and the choir is a brilliant way to balance trademark heaviness with emotional impact. Viribus Unitis is the most impactful album I’ve listened to in a long, long time, and I admire every musician involved for their part in that. Viribus Unitis was my top album for 2025 the moment I finished the first spin.
Honorable Mention
- Marko Hietala // Roses from the Deep – I’ve looked back at my review of Roses from the Deep a couple of times since writing and wondered if my personal admiration for Hietala’s career made me over-excited to review it. Is it possible I rated it highly simply because it’s such a fascinating culmination of the career of a musician I like? Either way, I’m keeping to the course—this was a fun listen in a year where I didn’t find so many upbeat albums to enjoy, and I keep coming back to it in bits and pieces depending on my mood; it’s a diverse exploration, and you can tell everyone had a good fun creating it.
Song of the Year
This was a hard one. There are so many powerful, emotional songs littered throughout this list—especially on Viribus Unitis, where the passion is particularly raw. But in keeping with the theme of what I personally found most affecting, I just keep coming back to this little gem on Autumn Tears’s latest. “Martyrdom – Catharsis (Where Gods Go to Die)” has a strangely compelling quality that kept me coming back again and again since I first reviewed Crown of the Clairvoyant. The singing, choirs, organ—really, everything about the composition is mesmerizing. I don’t imagine a lot of people will have this one on their year-end playlists. It’s a niche, quiet little song, but it’s wormed its way into my heart and speaks strongly to how I’ve felt about 2025 in a way I can’t quite describe.
Crown of the Clairvoyant by Autumn Tears
#1914 #2025 #Aephanemer #Amorphis #ApocalypseOrchestra #BlackNarcissus #CalvaLouise #ConcreteAge #Dawnwalker #Ellereve #FallingLeaves #Fallujah #HowlingGiant #JoQuail #Lists #MaresOfThrace #MarkoHietala #Messa #Nechochwen #NetRuiner #Psychonaut #RaphaelWeinrothBrowne #Saor #Scardust #SentynelSAndTwelveSTopTenIshOf2025 #ShepherdsOfCassini #VölurCares
#aephanemer #amorphis #apocalypseorchestra #blacknarcissus #calvalouise #concreteage
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-12-27 · 13:44 UTC
Alekhines Gun’s, ClarkKent’s and Owlswald’s Top Ten(ish) of 2025 By Steel Druhm
Alekhines Gun
It’s genuinely surreal to be writing this article. This Gun found his whole life flipped upside down literally on New Year’s Eve, in a new town, a new state, unemployed, and with nothing to do but review. By God’s grace, I’ve managed to find an actual career in my new town, walking into a new industry with nothing on my resume but exuberance and enthusiasm.1 This blog, with its incredible set of writers who inspire me daily, and readership who prove endearing and exasperating in equal measure, has been a rare moment of consistency in a year filled with professional and personal uncertainty. I didn’t get to listen to nearly as many albums as I’d hoped to, thanks to this being such a transitional year for my life, and perhaps in years to come, I’ll look back on this list in annoyance. But for the moment, it stands as a monument of achievement; of personal growth and practical accomplishment, and I’m immensely grateful to every reader and commenter for being along with me on this journey.
My thanks to The Angry One for giving me a second chance in my n00b days when it became clear I didn’t understand the assignment; I hope you don’t regret your choice too much.2 Thanks to the main AMG staff for being so friendly and welcoming, especially Mystikus Hugebeard, Dear Hollow, Twelve, and Kenstrosity. My eternal fealty to Steel for enduring what I imagine was an unbearable amount of stupid questions and formatting issues as I got my sea legs under me, and continue to see how much I have yet to grow as a writer.
And lastly, all my love and an Eternal Hails to my Freezer Freak brethren – Tyme, Killjoy, Owlswald, and Clark Kent. You guys were the best n00b class a guy could ask to come up with, and it has been such a privilege to have been formally writing alongside the four of you this year and call you friends as well as colleagues. Cheers to many more.

#Ish: Phobocosm // Gateway – Late release or no, it only took one listen to know this was something I needed in my life. Unrelenting in its atmosphere and with a tone like being devoured by vampire bats, Gateway doesn’t want for a plethora of oppressive moments and maintains its bleakness with admirable consistency. With interludes that function more like proper instrumentals between the more heavy cuts, Phobocosm rotate between blunt force trauma and existential despair in equal measure, flattening brain marrow with kaiju-sized stomptastic riffs only to throw you haplessly into depressive and gloom-drenched melodies the next. The rare kind of death metal peak for a rainy day, open up the gate and let it take you on a journey you might not come back from.
#10: Ancient Death // Ego Dissolution – Ancient Death is a testimony to why you should always read our foul filter excavations. Boasting a styling of, dare I say, classier old school deathisms with a healthy dollop of melody and chuggathons for days, Ego Dissolution is a mighty slab indeed. Kenstrosity quite correctly heaped praise on this release for its rare tonal fusion of Death and The Chasm, and beyond that, it has excellently implemented clean vocals, subtle synth work to bolster doomier moments, and riffs which transition from bludgeoning to esoteric in a heartbeat. Solos are peak, as all good death requires, atmospheres are coated in muck and mire without being underproduced, and even the instrumental stands out as a solid step in the journey on offer. Ego Dissolution deserves better than being a footnote in the annals of filter history, representing a highbrow slab of quality in mood-setting while still offering up violence at every turn.
#9: Teitanblood // From the Visceral Abyss – These void-worshipers have crafted an album that straddles the line of black, death, and war metal so flawlessly that every trip to their abyss leaves me exhausted and battered, but utterly enthralled. A flawless fusion of riff and atmosphere in equal measure, every ingredient from the militant drumming to the cacophonous vocals is a means to an end, and whether you’re in it more for the former or the latter is entirely irrelevant. Few albums manage to transcend being a collection of tracks into being a completed whole body of work so smoothly, and From the Visceral Abyss does so with blackened bile pouring through pounding through its poisoned veins. Disconcerting in its antagonism yet enthralling in the exactness of its vision, Teitanblood remains an auditory scrying mirror into the deepest pits that we were never meant to gaze upon.
#8: Imperial Triumphant // Goldstar – Goldstar is exactly what I had hoped for after the excessively out-there of their previous release: A more riff-centric album, which only just scales down the weird to let the approachability shine through like bait on the unsuspecting listener. To be sure, the alien Gorguts and Voivodisms remain, but this album takes a flavor similar to Alphaville3 and it builds its progressivism on the bones of licks and riffs which don’t take twenty listens to decipher before their foundation is made clear. Virtuoso musicianship remains at a peak, but as the tagline “Nine Class ‘A’ Songs” suggests, Imperial Triumphant have opted less to overwhelm the listener as much as flex on them, with fantastic results. A great introduction if you’re new to the band, and an enthralling listen for the jazz enthusiast and avant-garde black metal fan alike.
#7: Kalaveraztekah // Nikan Axkan – I underrated this a bit during the initial rodeo. While my complaints about the treble-heavy lack of bottom end remain, this is a masterfully composed record which continues to reveal new moments of wonder with each spin. Riffs designed to evoke thematic atmosphere and crush skulls in equal measure abound (“Nikan Axkan”) while remembering to summon the native beauty of the Aztec backdrop (“Yowaltekuhtli”) with skill. Lurching into Morbid Angel flirtations laced with delightful indigenous beats one minute and having haunting clean vocals drenched with horror and ritualism the next, this album is a whirlwind of a listen, a journey through primal soundscapes and human history meshed with technical prowess and grace. Hopefully someone picks them up soon, as they are well deserving of a bigger spotlight, and if you missed our rodeo on this release (shame on you) then you owe it to yourself to give it a listen.
#6: Labryinthus Stellarum // Rift in Reality – When I was very young, trancecore was one of the first “heavy” sounds I cut my teeth on, and consequently, my earballs feel right at home in these rifts. Impossibly catchy without being so simple as to offend my intelligence, and featuring electronics that have as much diversity and life in them as any guitar tone, Rift in Reality is a testimony that you can make techno and metal work on albums not named The Key. The blackened production stands in sharp contrast to the piercing, cosmic-echo cleanliness of the electronics, which are always spearheading the melodies but never at the cost of the full band’s heft and power. Spreading their songwriting wings a bit from the last release in more intricate melodies, a smattering of breakdowns, and heavier use of cleans has afforded Labryinthus Stellarum more personality than gimmickries, and I can’t wait to see where they go from here.
#5: Oskoreien // Hollow Fangs – It’s been a decent year for the more raw elements of black metal, but these fangs poisoned all who stood in their way. Somehow catchy in its simplicity yet not devoid of moving melodies, Hollow Fangs isn’t as much an innovation of the thing as much as the thing done at peak quality and skill. The cold tones reinforce the melancholy on display in the chord progressions, while the occasional leads sound more introspective than meandering despite their lack of raw noodlage. While I agree with the spirit of Owlswald‘s criticisms, I cannot deny that I continue to be drawn to this record despite its warts. Hollow Fangs has managed to set itself apart this year while not doing much out of the ordinary, containing that X factor that finds me reaching out to it over and over again.
#4: Blut Aus Nord // Ethereal Horizons – Like all good Blut Aus Nord albums, I had to let this album come to me, but once it did, it shows no signs of letting up. Somehow sidestepping the melodic trappings of the Memoria Vetusta series into something far more hypnotic yet no less deep in scope, Ethereal Horizons places all its stock on triumphant hypnosis. With nods to several chapters towards the band’s era in composition and production alike, the French kings use the building blocks of their dissonant works and claustrophobic atmospheres to construct something liberating and uplifting, with even the momentary bouts of darkness more atmospheric than truly grueling. I suspect we will find Ethereal Horizons to be an important stepping stone for the next chapter of blackened adventure. For now, adjust expectations away from whatever sequel you were hoping for in their litany of journeys and accept the new horizons showing just past the dawn.
#3: Cryptopsy // An Insatiable Violence – I was an admitted latecomer to the Cryptopsy brand, stumbling upon their excellent Book of Suffering EPs some years ago. Consequently, I’ve been a staunch defender of their modern era even as I dove backward into the classics and peculiarities. An Insatiable Violence smacks with a validation of all my affections, keeping the technical might while continuing to grow in groovy, melodic directions. True, I should have been a tad harder on the production of the drum tones than I was in my initial review, but tough tiddlywinks. From the sky-piercing beauty of the solo in the opening track “The Nimis Adoration” to the bookending body blow of “Malignant Needs,” this album remains a quality offering of the most elite of brutal death. Succinct in length but with twice the riff-to-minute factor, Cryptopsy stands supreme at the top of the more violent end of the musical spectrum this year.
#2: Messa // The Spin – While part of me deeply misses the droning elements and slightly crustier tone of Belfry, there’s no denying the spiritual journey this album takes me on with each listen. The embodiment of a grower, what begins as a somewhat underwhelming (compared to previous efforts) listen slowly unfurls itself to be an excellently realized, meticulously composed release. Look no further than album highlight “The Dress” for riffs that border more on twangy than “crushing” and yet pack the spirit of the doomiest doom in each measure. Vocalist Sara continues to up her harmonization game with double and triple-tracked melodies that reach right into my soul. Though The Spin is relatively light in guitar tone, each listen reveals a weight and power hidden from track to track, and the fantastic album closer “Thicker Blood” instinctively has me reaching out to replay the album as soon as it ends. Truly gorgeous.
#1: Aran Angmar // Ordo Diabolicum – Since plucking this record at random with no prior knowledge or expectations from the pit, Aran Angmar has stuck with me through professional and personal challenges and victories, tragedies and triumphs, in a manner befitting the greatest of Greek black metal. The harmonized leads in “Chariots of Fire” still dwell rent-free in my head, and the wailing clean vocals of the kickoff track “Dungeons of the Damned” still get my blood pumping every time. Excellent for cleaning your impossibly filthy house, working on a long overdue job project, or slaughtering your enemies by the hundreds in equal measure, Ordo Diabolicum is the sound of perseverance rewarded, of effort given and blood shed for a higher purpose, and actually witnessing the payoff with your own eyes. Sidestepping the tropes of evil for something so supremely triumphant is a move that has paid big dividends for this outfit, and while blackened to its core, few soundtracks have encouraged me to keep on keepin’ on like this has. A monstrous record to declare war on whatever oppresses you.
Honorable Mentions:
- Mutagenic Host // The Diseased Machine – Designed to reduce one’s gluteus maximus into a shape far more concave, this is a youthful release wise beyond its years in bringing the pain and infecting all in its wake.
- Qrixkuor // The Womb of the World – Bringing in an actual symphonic performance has somehow rendered this cavernous sound even more daunting. At once engaging and uncomfortable, this is an album for those who find beauty in the most repulsive of darkened shrines.
ClarkKent
When I first discovered the Angry Metal Guy blog back in 2021,4 it was during a period of transition in my life, as COVID spurred a career transition out of teaching and, eventually, into data analytics. At the time, my metal tastes were limited to more well-known acts like Metallica and Iron Maiden, with forays into Opeth, Enslaved, and Ayreon. Boy, did this blog expand my horizon. Between taking online classes and staying home with my two kids, I devoured AMG reviews and dove into the vast ocean of metal acts that both the writers and commenters introduced me to. And then, when Angry Metal Guy put out the casting call later that year, I was out of a job and always wanted to be a writer, so I thought, Why not? Little did I know this decision would see me stored in a freezer for four long years. Thankfully, when I thawed out last year, it was with four great guys who all kept each other sane during our n00bship: Alekhines Gun, Tyme, Killjoy, and Owlswald. I’m happy to have had their camaraderie and friendship, and I’m stoked that all five of us were demoted to staff writers. I am also grateful to Steel Druhm and Angry Metal Guy for bringing me aboard, despite my horrid taste, and to Dolphin Whisperer and Maddog for their helpful tips and feedback on my drafts. As Steel would say, you guys were gentle, yet brutal, and in the best possible way. With 2025 proving a stressful year, largely due to increasing work demands, listening to promos and writing reviews has proven a helpful outlet. I’m looking forward to an awesome 2026.

#ish. Bloodletter // Leave the Light Behind — While staying true to their melothrash sound, Bloodletter continues to improve in their songwriting year after year. This is easily their best and my favorite thrash record of the year, in a year where not much thrash really stood out to me. The tight songwriting, the energy, and the melodic leads are all top-notch, and this one stands up even after repeated spins.
#10. Wings of Steel // Winds of Time — This was one of my favorite reviews to write in 2025. Not just because the album was big and fun, with big bombastic numbers like the opening song “Winds of Time,” or tight and speedy cuts like “Saints and Sinners,” or ballads like “Crying,” or my song of the year, “Flight of the Eagle.” It gave me the rare opportunity to write fart jokes and the even rarer chance to “steal” a promo from Steel. So many throwback classic metal bands sound like they belong in that older time, but Wings of Steel sound timeless—they could belong in the new and the then all at the same time.
#9. Besna // Krásno — While I’m not typically drawn to post-metal, Besna’s Krásno proves an exception. The harsh guitar tones and vocals provide an alluring contrast with the catchy melodic tremolos. Despite its brief length, this is a surprisingly progressive album. Each song reveals a beauty to Besna’s songwriting and musicianship, and that album art is gorgeous, to boot. I love everything Besna does here, and this proved to be just the beginning of what was a strong start to 2025.
#8. Green Carnation // A Dark Poem Part I: The Shores of Melancholia — I’m glad Doc Grier introduced Green Carnation to me when Leaves of Yesteryear topped his 2020 list. I love this band, and this record is no exception. It has six tracks of pure earworm and ends up being one of the catchiest albums of the year. These guys know how to write songs that make you feel good and want to dance and sing along to. What’s more exciting is that this is the first of a planned trilogy, so hopefully that means we don’t have to wait long for the next one.
#7. Phantom Spell // Heather and Hearth — Heather and Hearth is like a time machine, one taking you back to ’70s era prog. Man, it’s a lot of fun. It’s catchy and bright—a shining beacon amidst a horde of brutal, violent metal. This is packed to the gills with hooks, from spry riffs to feel-good synths to memorable choruses. Metal rarely puts a smile on your face without sounding like cheesy power metal à la Fellowship, but Phantom Spell does it here. Apparently, this kind of bright and cheery metal was just what I needed this year, and it proved a nice summer balm.
#6. Atlantic // Timeworn — When I first listened to this earlier in the year, I just assumed it was the work of an established, well-known band. So it was a surprise to learn Timeworn was actually the debut from a relative newcomer in Callan Hoy. Something about 2025 has drawn me towards these uplifting albums that burst with good feelings and catchy melodies. For the 34 minutes I spend with this, I just get lost in the currents of the tremolos and blast beats and, at least for a moment, live in a world of calm and bliss.
#5. In the Woods… // Otra — This sort of melodic, catchy metal is my kryptonite. In the Woods… plays the kind of songs that get lodged in my brain, and I start whistling them while doing my grocery shopping, drawing funny looks. I’d never heard of these guys until Grier’s review earlier this year, and now I’m thinking maybe I should dive into their back catalog. More worryingly, this is the second album on my list that Grier gave a glowing review for. That means either he actually has good taste, or my taste is just as bad as his.
#4. Oromet // The Sinking Isle — If I had a time machine, I’d go back and rate this one a little higher. This isn’t a “marathon” like some of Bell Witch’s records, nor a piece of crushing funeral doom, nor one that makes extensive use of silence. It is introspective, full of surprises, and melodic. It also came at a period in my life when work was particularly stressful. Playing this helped provide me with some solace and calm as I took in the beautiful compositions. These guys have a bright future ahead of them.
#3. Deafheaven // Lonely People with Power — After the misstep that was Infinite Granite, it’s nice to see Deafheaven back to form. I was ready to write them off, but thanks to Doom_et_Al’s impassioned words, I excitedly dove in. I’m glad I did. I now know their form of shoegaze-y black metal is divisive among metal fans (I was clueless about this fact when I first discovered them), but I don’t care, and I still love it. It’s just so easy to get lost in those lush guitar tones and harsh rasps. It’s tough to pick out any one tune as a standout because it’s the experience of the record as a whole that is so rewarding.
#2. In Mourning // The Immortal — This is a remarkable piece of melodic progressive death. I hadn’t heard of In Mourning until Kenstrosity and the other AMG staffers started talking them up ahead of this release. It seems I’ve really missed out and need to fix that. The Immortal is just about perfect. From song craft to musical performances, these guys nail it. From the beautiful guitar tones to the excellent combo of clean and harsh vox to the memorable melodies, The Immortal is an emotional tour de force that grows more majestic with each spin.
#1. Tómarúm // Beyond Obsidian Euphoria — When I first moved away from more mainstream metal acts, it was progressive death bands like Tómarúm that drew me in. Opeth, Between the Buried and Me, Enslaved, and Ayreon opened up my ears to the reward of listening to songs that reveal new layers and depth with repeated listening. Each year, one or two prog death records climb high in my rankings, and this year that mantle belongs to Tómarúm. This record is massive, and the more time I spend with it, the more depths I plumb, and I find that it contains never-ending riches. There are just so many surprises—the technicality, the speed, the melodies—even some flutes! As great as the debut was, these guys have only gotten better and have earned a spot as one of my current favorites in the genre, along with Iotunn and Dvne. This is the kind of album I love to get lost in—it’s pure bliss.
Honorable Mentions
- Empyrean Sanctum // Detachment from Reality — This passion project from Justin Kellerman may not have impressed my Rodeo-mates as much as me, but I strongly connected with it due to dynamic songwriting and inspired performances.
- Skaldr // Samsr — This was initially a lot higher on my list, but it didn’t hold up as well as it did back in January. Still, it’s a remarkable bit of melodic black metal and good enough to rank as among the best of 2025.
- Aephenamer // Utopie — Melodic and symphonic metal with superb songwriting? Sign me up. This latest from Aephenamer is just so dynamic and fun, and it’s another great effort from a reliably high-quality group. The last couple of songs are absolute beauties.
- An Abstract Illusion // The Sleeping City — This may not be as strong as their older stuff, but it’s still incredibly moving. The introduction of synths charts a new direction for the band, but they make it work with some gorgeous atmospherics.
Songs o’ the Year
1. Wings of Steel — “Flight of the Eagle” 2. Lord of the Lost — “One of Us Will Be Next” 3. In the Woods — “Let Me Sing” 4. Hanging Garden — “Morgan’s Trail” 5. Fer de Lance — “Fires on the Mountainside” 6. Tómarúm — “Shed this Erroneous Skin” 7. Green Carnation — “In Your Paradise” 8. Structure — “Will I Deserve It?” 9. Atlantic — “Voyages” 10. In Mourning — “Staghorn” 11. Dolven — “You’ve Chosen”

Owlswald
I’ve finally made it to the end of my first year on staff, culminating with my inaugural list. This time last year, I was deep in the throes of my n00bdom and watched from the dark confines of the dungeon as many of my Freezer Crew brethren shared their initial staff lists. And as stoked as I was for my mates, I couldn’t help but feel a bit jealous that I was still toiling with cleanup detail as an unnamed shadow. But the wheel of ascent turns for us all. After a few more months surviving on table scraps and standing water, our Managing Ape unlocked my cage, releasing me at last into the aviary and the promised start of my pledged service bound labor.
Though my escape from the rookery took longer, that extended time was not without its merits. Reviewing is a skill that must be honed like any other, and although metal—and music generally—has been an essential part of my life since I was young, it has admittedly taken longer for me to truly articulate the “why.” Anyone can declare an album “good” or “bad,” but developing and communicating the rationale is an entirely different discipline. A discipline that I believe I have improved over my first year as a writer here, and one that I look forward to developing further with more time in the seat.
My thanks go out, first and foremost, to Steel and AMG Himself for granting me the opportunity to contribute to this very special, longstanding community and for the monumental trust they have placed in me. Specifically, the trust that I wouldn’t utterly trash the place—a faith I’ve done my best to test (More on one attempt below). I must also thank my fellow writers—both old and new, including those now in the annals of AMG—who I’ve read for years and whose work continues to inspire me. And last, but certainly not least, I thank all of you who read, comment and visit the site regularly. The reality that my thoughts command even a sliver of your precious time remains utterly surreal. For that connection, I am truly honored.
Taking this good energy and running with it, let’s get to the list!

#ish. Harvested // Dysthymia – I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me at the start of the year that my first list would be kicked off by an unsigned band. But here we are, and Harvested’s self-released debut, Dysthymia, deserves the honor because it fucking rules. Operating in the sweet spot between Decapitated and Cattle Decapitation, the album boasts one of the best guitar tones of the year. These Canadians flaunt a songwriting maturity that many veteran groups twice their age still haven’t found—a sound that is as bone-crushingly heavy as it is technically brutal. I have been spinning Dysthymia regularly since its release, and highlight tracks like “Unending Madness” and “Gathered and Deluded” make primo Heavy Moves Heavy additions.
#10. Jade // Mysteries of a Flowery Dream – Some albums demand the right conditions and the listener’s utmost attention to enjoy fully, and Jade’s Mysteries of a Flowery Dream is such a record. Though it took a while for their sophomore effort to envelop me in its dark, murky, and oscillating guise, I’m glad I remained patient because the payoff was huge. This Barcelonian quartet has created a sensory-rich listening experience that is as immersive as it is complex and dynamic, featuring superb songwriting intertwined with recurrent themes and soaring leads that ensure the album’s 43 minutes feel unified and purposeful. Achieving this level of cohesive, complex dynamism is a feat that is incredibly hard to execute well, which makes Mysteries of a Flowery Dream all the more impressive.
#9. Pillars of Cacophony // Paralipomena – Each year, one tech-death record usually carves out a spot on my list. Last year, Apogean’s Cyberstrictive set an incredibly high bar, taking album of the year honors with its near-perfect blend of hook-laden guitar maneuvers and groove-focused rhythms. While tech-death won’t be repeating as champion in 2025, Pillars of Cacophony are nonetheless representing the genre in a major way with Paralipomena. The album showcases multi-instrumentalist Dominik’s talents in crafting unsettling, unpredictable soundscapes filled with propulsive fretwork, dissonant phrases, and kinetic rhythmic patterns. Drawing directly from Dominik’s own research as a bioscientist, Paralipomena coils science with the aural might of death metal to create a record that is as conceptually authentic as it is musically captivating.
#8. King Witch // III – Doom—and more specifically stoner—has always been hit-or-miss to these ears. But on III, Scotland’s King Witch grabbed the best parts of the genre and compressed them into a Seattle-made mold of hard rock and grunge that immediately won me over. The album is the culmination of the group’s artistic evolution, combining the strong songwriting of their debut with the dynamic shifts of their follow-up. Guitarist Jamie Gilchrist and bassist Rory Lee assemble a sophisticated foundation of earthmoving, genre-bending riffs that perfectly augment the star power of vocalist Laura Donnelly, whose Chris Cornell-like range and Janis Joplin grit give the material undeniable power and command. The result is a sound that elevates III far beyond typical doom boundaries into one of the year’s best records.
#7. Agriculture // The Spiritual Sound – I initially missed Agriculture’s self-titled debut and follow-up EP, so The Spiritual Sound was my first introduction to this Californian black metal outfit. But after months of having this record on constant rotation—and seeing their live show—I can confidently conclude they are one of the most innovative and unique black metal groups operating right now. Self-dubbed as “ecstatic black metal,” Agriculture shatters convention by challenging the dark extremity of the genre with a patchwork of math rock, shoegaze, noise, and folk influences. Powered by Leah Levinson’s manic, shifting vocals and inventive guitar work from Dan Meyer and Richard Chowenhill, The Spiritual Sound is a genre-defying record that is both unpredictable and intensely authentic.
#6. Cryptopsy // An Insatiable Violence – Outside of my admiration for fellow drummer extraordinaire Flo Mounier, I have to admit that I had more or less forgotten about Cryptopsy after 2012’s self-titled album. Thanks to my fellow Freezer Crew brother Alekhines Gun, I gave them another go, and An Insatiable Violence hit me like a ton of bricks, forcing me to quickly figure out how to start begging these Canadians for forgiveness. From Matt McGachy’s unique, manic screams to Mounier’s pummeling gravity blasts and double-bass to Christian Donaldson’s “waltz-rooted chuggathons” and fret noises, every aspect of An Insatiable Violence is crystal clear, full of groove and hits like a fucking tank. Needless to say, I won’t be making the same mistake twice, and these death metal legends now have my full attention again.
#5. …and Oceans // The Regeneration Itinerary – Being a longtime fan of these multifarious Finns, I rejoiced when they returned from an extended hiatus in 2020 with Cosmic World Mother. Yet, as strong as that album—and follow-up As in Gardens, So in Tombs—was, it didn’t have the same symphonic and eclectic oomph as The Dynamic Gallery of Thoughts or The Symmetry of I – The Circle of O. Much to my pleasure, The Regeneration Itinerary is a riveting return to form for …and Oceans, returning to their symphonic, frenetic and blackened sound of yore while maintaining the incisiveness of their modern form. This album is peppered with their classic trademarks, and “Prophetical Mercury Implement” is the best song the group has written in decades. After taking a couple of albums to get their groove back, The Regeneration Itinerary is evidence that …and Oceans has found it again.
#4. Messa // The Spin – Messa’s fourth full-length marks the second doom record on my list (and the second led by a badass frontwoman). On The Spin, Messa continues to evolve their progressive identity, imbuing their sound with flavors of 80’s dark post-punk and gothic rock that evoke the haunting architecture of early Killing Joke. While Sara’s vocals may not possess the same boisterous power as Laura Donnelly’s, her spellbinding presence and seductive delivery make The Spin simply irresistible. Guitarist Alberto complements Sara’s bewitching and buttery croons with sparkling arpeggios and overdriven solos steeped heavily in the classic occult groups of the ’70s. It’s clear Messa is operating on a completely different level than their peers, and I can’t get enough of The Spin.
#3. Buried Realm // The Dormant Darkness – You always remember your first. Buried Realm’s The Dormant Darkness was my first full review on staff, a record that I am forever grateful Twelve decided to waive his seniority over and allow my newly-clipped wings to review because it ended up surprising the hell out of me. Josh Dummer’s technical melodeath project came out firing on all cylinders with its third album, upping the virtuosity with a slew of new guests. It is full of highlights, memorable hooks, and technically impressive solos and is a non-stop blast. In fact, I loved The Dormant Darkness so much that I committed the cardinal sin of breaking the score counter immediately—an action that can quickly get one thrown into the woodchipper of despair. Luckily, I am still here to tell the tale, and now I have my love of The Dormant Darkness to show for it.
#2. Tómarúm // Beyond Obsidian Euphoria – If there was ever a year for me to look for a #1A/#1B scenario, this would have been it, as I floundered back and forth between this album and my #1 pick. Chalk it up to indecision or whatever you must, but ultimately, one can’t go wrong with either in this instance. In short, Tómarúm’s Beyond Obsidian Euphoria is long-form progressive death metal greatness. Razor-sharp technicality, sparkling melodicism, and excellent songwriting form a weighty spirit that counterbalances crushing heft with airy refrains that move and flow seamlessly across its rewarding 70-minute runtime. There isn’t much more I can say here that Sponge-fren Ken‘s aptly penned review didn’t capture already, outside of stating that Tómarúm‘s opus is as close to perfect in both structure and execution as one can get. To put it simply, it’s a triumph.
#1. In Mourning // The Immortal – Speaking of perfection, In Mourning have achieved such a standard with their latest melodeath offering, The Immortal. After our Almighty Overlord listened to The Immortal following the flurry of votes the record received for August’s Record O’ the Month, he responded with a few choice words that captured my thoughts about the album succinctly: “Damn…” he said. “They nailed this. Well, that’s easy.” But I think that is even an understatement for how incredibly awesome this album is, and, doing one better, I don’t think many have grasped it yet, either. With their seventh album, these Swedes have found the perfect combination of their patented Opethian death metal chuggery, sadboi melodies, and creative dynamism, resulting in a sound rich in emotional depth with more digestible hooks than one can handle. I’m talking hooks—both riffs and vocal melodies—that dig deep into your psyche and never let go. They connect on a different level—a telltale sign we’re dealing with a classic. A decade from now, when In Mourning has hopefully amassed an even deeper discography, should the question arise—”What is the most essential melodeath album of the last ten years?”—I’m willing to bet The Immortal will be the resounding answer.
Honorable Mentions
- Mutagenic Host // The Diseased Machine – I miss Edge of Sanity with a passion, but Mutagenic Host’s The Diseased Machine is helping stem my longing—at least temporarily. These newcomers kicked off 2025 with an absolutely filthy dose of death metal that hasn’t stopped invading my playlist.
- Abigail Williams // A Void Within Existence – While 2019’s Walk Beyond the Dark was one hell of a record, A Void Within Existence may very well surpass it. Drummer Mike Heller codifies the attack, as Ken Sorceron and company unleash an all-out assault of crushing weight and unrelenting groove.
- Bianca // Bianca – Despite its late arrival hindering its consideration for a higher ranking, these Italians clearly have something special brewing with their self-titled debut. An enchanting mix of ethereality and chilling blackened soundscapes that is worth hearing immediately.
- Ambush // Evil in All Dimensions – Heavy metal group Ambush lived up to their name when they absolutely ambushed my ears and eyes with their nostalgic blend of 80’s Maiden, Priest, and Helloween, replete with their oh-so-tight fashion. Vocalist Oskar Jacobsson is poised to be the genre’s next colossal talent. Remember—you heard it here first.
- Fallujah // Xenotaph – Following the heavily criticized 2019 effort, Undying Light, it took six years for these tech-death masters to regroup and recalibrate. But Fallujah delivered a massive surprise with Xenotaph, easily one of their strongest—and best sounding—records to date. Here’s to hoping this reinvigorated momentum holds true.
Song o’ the Year
Ambush // “Bending the Steel” – This surprise pick eventually knocked …and Oceans’ “Prophetical Mercury Implement” from the top spot. It’s a brilliant piece of songwriting that would have immediately launched this act to superstardom had it only been released four decades earlier. 100% nostalgia and cold, hard steel.

#AndOceans #2025 #AbigailWilliams #Aephenamer #Agriculture #AlekhinesGunS #Ambush #AnAbstractIllusion #AncientDeath #AranAngmar #Atlantic #Besna #Bianca #BlogLists #Bloodletter #BlutAusNord #BuriedRealm #ClarkKentSAndOwlswaldSTopTenIshOf2025 #Cryptopsy #Deafheaven #EmpyreanSanctum #Fallujah #GreenCarnation #Harvested #ImperialTriumphant #InMourning #InTheWoods #Jade #Kalaveraztekah #KingWitch #LabryinthusStellarum #Lists #Messa #MutagenicHost #Oromet #Oskoreien #PhantomSpell #Phobocosm #PillarsOfCacophony #Skaldr #Teitanblood #Tómarúm #WingsOfSteel
#andoceans #abigailwilliams #aephenamer #agriculture #alekhinesguns #ambush
Heliograph @[email protected] · 2025-12-25 · 21:13 UTC

also #Desiderata 👆 👇
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.
by Max #Ehrmann ©1927
https://www.desiderata.com

#desiderata #ehrmann
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2026-03-16 · 16:43 UTC

Major Parkinson – Valesa – Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse! Review By Killjoy
At first blush, pop music and progressive rock might seem too contradictory to be combined effectively. While the former prioritizes immediate accessibility, the latter prizes unconventional artistic expression. Even so, several Norwegian bands are finding immensely original ways to reconcile these differences. Moron Police and Meer have been showered with heaps of deserved praise by my colleagues, but I discovered my personal favorite of the bunch tucked at the very end of GardensTale’s Top Ten(ish) of 2022 list. Major Parkinson’s Valesa – Chapter I: Velvet Prison quickly became one of my most beloved records of all time with its inimitable charm and wit. All permanent band members have returned for Valesa – Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse!, which is particularly relieving given vocalist Jon Ivar Kollbotn’s heart attack while performing on stage a few years ago. I’m grateful that the full crew is still here to delight audiences once more.
If there’s anything predictable about Major Parkinson, it’s their unpredictability. While the chimeric fusion of synth-pop and prog rock of Velvet Prison was drenched in 80s nostalgia, Viva the Apocalypse! feels somewhat more modernized. The guitar lines (Øystein Bech-Eriksen and Sondre Skollevoll1) are much more prominent and flashy, with full-on solos in “Showbiz” and “Superdad.” In fact, pretty much everything about Viva the Apocalypse! is flashy. Lars Christian Bjørknes’s2 piano keys that featured prominently in prior albums are mostly replaced by glitzy synths, frequently underscored by blazing trumpets3 and smooth saxophone.4 Brand-new guest vocalist Halie’s husky singing complements Kollbotn’s gravelly yet velvety tones extremely well. His voice has only become richer over time, bathing my ears as if with warm honey.
Valesa – Chapter II: Viva the Apocalypse! by Major Parkinson
Major Parkinson has always been defined by duality, but on Viva the Apocalypse! it’s sharper than ever. The first half of the record is full of ridiculously catchy, quirky arrangements and carefree curiosity. There are even sprinklings of funk (“Superdad”) and gospel (“Showbiz”). “Viva the Apocalypse!” is the climax of this feverish party, as trumpets, upbeat electronic tunes, and guitar riffs blast with reckless abandon. But something about all this mirth doesn’t feel quite genuine, and the second half of Viva the Apocalypse! grows more hostile as the mask starts to slip. “Karma Supernova” begins with ominous bass notes that intertwine with guitar and synth lines to signal something sinister approaching, with Sondre Veland’s drumming sporadically becoming frantic as tension builds and releases. His frenzied kitwork and the whirring synth tone at the end of “Maybelline” give the vivid impression that the record is about to self-destruct.
As different as the individual elements are on Viva the Apocalypse!, Major Parkinson again weaves them together into a unified and unique experience. I miss the eccentric interludes from Velvet Prison, but other songwriting tricks have carried over. As before, Viva the Apocalypse! leans on simple recurring lyrics to tie the tracks together with tickling déjà vu. Examples include “The world is on fire, and you look so beautiful” (“Superdad,” Kiss Me Now!”), and “Free drinks for everyone!” (“Showbiz,” “Karma Supernova”). I particularly love the one-two punch of “Superdad” and “Father Superior,” which (as their titles suggest) are deliciously complementary, both musically and lyrically. However, I’m less enthralled by Kollbotn’s unsettling shouting match with returning vocalist Peri Winkle in “Maybelline,” which contrasts starkly with their gentle duet in “Kiss Me Now!” Despite the powerful artistic statement, these closing tracks are more difficult to appreciate musically.
In many ways, Viva the Apocalypse! is Major Parkinson’s most incendiary chapter to date. It’s more technically impressive—the drums and guitars in particular get their chance to shine brightly. Once again, they have cleverly evolved their sound and leveraged a diverse supporting cast to enrich the musical environment. The first half of Viva the Apocalypse! is a fantastic dream from which I don’t want to wake, but the second half is meaner and less emotionally gripping for me. Still, there is something special going on here, just like in Norway’s prog scene as a whole. If the world is on fire, I’m glad that Major Parkinson is around to give us a good time as it goes up in flames.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: PCM
Label: Apollon Records
Websites: majorparkinson.bandcamp.com | majorparkinson.com | facebook.com/majorparkinson
Releases Worldwide: March 13th, 2026
#2026 #35 #ApollonRecords #MajorParkinson #Mar26 #Meer #MoronPolice #NorwegianMetal #PeriWinkle #ProgressiveRock #Review #Reviews #SynthPop #ValesaChapterIIVivaTheApocalypse

#apollonrecords #majorparkinson #mar26 #meer #moronpolice #norwegianmetal
DrWeb @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 17:41 UTC

How pets healed us this year – The Washington Post
In Your Own Words
Each week, we highlight a comment from our readers. This week, my favorite comment was on a story I wrote about how pets healed us this year.
“ My beautiful mom and greyhound died last year 3 weeks apart in the fall, both tragically and unexpectedly. This past July, I adopted a 6 month old pup from a local shelter. She returned pure joy to my broken heart. Her shelter name was Poppy. I thought about changing it then looked it up. It means “remembrance.” She is so smart, so affectionate, so playful. I like to think that my mom and grey had a hand and paw in the two of us coming into each other’s lives. – TarheelHeart – https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2025/12/26/pets-healed-us- 2025/?commentID=69da2a76-3def-483b-94d9- 90793784b4e3&utm_campaign=comment-share&utm_medium=soc- share&utm_source=link-share Kynlee Rogers, 10, with her dog, Tennessee. Both Kynlee and Tennessee were born with a cleft lip. (Kimberly Rogers)
The Optimist
How pets healed us this year
They give our lives deeper meaning and make us laugh. Here’s how pets helped get us through 2025.
December 26, 2025, 4 min

By Sydney Page
If you have a pet, you know their healing properties. If you don’t, there’s well-documented science to back it up. Even just a few minutes with a dog or cat can make someone happier and less stressed.
So with that in mind, here are some animals that boosted our mood this year, made us laugh and feel less lonely, and even saved some lives. Basically, they helped us get through 2025.
They improved our mental health
Norm Feigenbaum, a 93-year-old Los Angeles man, described his yellow Lab, Sunny, as his best friend. When Sunny went missing for nearly two weeks, Norm felt anxious, had sleepless nights and said he felt a profound sense of emptiness. Volunteers worked tirelessly to reunite them, and when they did, Norm’s emotional state steadied.
“Without her, there’s nothing,” Norm said.
Norm Feigenbaum reunites with Sunny, who was missing for 12 days. (Dog Days Search and Rescue)
Then there’s Kynlee, a girl from Kentucky, who adopted Tennessee, a Boston terrier with a cleft lip that matched her own. Their bond lifted Kynlee’s confidence and brightened her outlook on life.
“Tennee is just like her,” said Kynlee’s mother, Kimberly Rogers, adding that they happen to share the same birthday, June 4. “It just gives her something she can relate to. She’s not alone.”
They gave us many laughs
Some pets have big personalities. Ray Ray, a mischievous house cat from Pennsylvania, turned a family road trip into an adventure when he hitched a 100-mile ride on the roof of his family’s van before anyone noticed he was there. He ended up getting a New York City vacation out of it, though his family toted him around in a cat backpack and on a leash for safety.
Ray Ray the cat in Times Square. (Courtesy of Margaret Denardo)
Then there’s Duke, the golden retriever whose talent for “stealing” household items turned him into a social media fan favorite. Lamps, reading glasses, picture frames, purses, even plates — nothing is safe. Duke parades his treasures around proudly in his mouth, before guarding the items on his bed. He keeps his owner — and thousands of followers — amused with his mischief every day.
Duke, an 11-year-old golden retriever, guards a teapot. (Cathy Hoyt)
They strengthened our community
Faygo, a friendly goldendoodle from Virginia, was diagnosed with terminal cancer earlier this year. Knowing how much Faygo loved getting attention from people, his owners asked neighbors to stop by and give Faygo a pet. Dozens of people visited to offer Faygo comfort, treats and affection in his final days. Through Faygo, a community came together for a dog they barely knew.
Neighbor Matt Busby brought Faygo a ball, and they played with it in the yard. (Michelle Martin)
They saved people
Dogs have been known to alert people to perilous situations and even detect health issues or medical emergencies. Earlier this year, a shelter dog at an adoption event alerted a man that he was about to have a seizure, prompting his wife to take her husband home and give him his meds. She said the pooch’s instinct helped her husband avoid a dangerous seizure.
Another standout pooch this year is Freyja, a certified search-and-rescue dog in New Hampshire. When a 2-year-old girl went missing in the woods, Freyja and her handler spent nearly five hours navigating the dense, cold forest. Using her keen senses, Freyja tracked down the child, who was returned to her parents. Authorities noted that without Freyja’s tracking skills, the outcome could have been very different.
Jeremy Corson’s dog Freyja found a missing toddler who had been lost in the woods for hours. (Jeremy Corson)
They helped us live with purpose
Beef, an English bulldog recovering from pneumonia, helped his owner’s father, Manny Miranda, stay motivated to exercise. Their slow, short daily walks became a shared fitness journey, and beloved on social media.
Beef stopped going on many walks after a bout of pneumonia. But it turned out he was willing to get moving if Manny, 78, was with him. (America Miranda)
Courtney Proctor Cross transformed a struggling West Virginia animal shelter that was euthanizing most of its animals into a nationally recognized no-kill shelter.
Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: How pets healed us this year – The Washington Post
Tags: 2025, Animals, community, Companions, Friends, Healing, Health, Laughs, Live with Purpose, Mental Health, Pets, Saved People, Seniors, Shelters, The Washington Post
#2025 #Animals #community #Companions #Friends #Healing #Health #Laughs #LiveWithPurpose #MentalHealth #Pets #SavedPeople #Seniors #Shelters #TheWashingtonPost

#animals #community #companions #friends #healing #health