#nocturnus — Public Fediverse posts

As AMG readers surely know, death metal and science fiction go together like science and fiction. Foundational and contemporary examples alike confirm that atonal riffing, guttural growling, and machine-gun drumming pair well with spaceships, aliens, and exoplanets. On the surface, Italy’s Into Darkness fit nicely into this milieu—that cover recalls the content of Spheres (Pestilence) and the color palette of The Key (Nocturnus).1 The band insists, however, that they do not play ‘sci-fi’ or ‘spacey’ death metal. Instead, Into Darkness describe Route to the Outer Side, their long-gestating debut album, as timeless death metal with a focus on ‘divulgative astronomy,’ which translates complex science into accessible language. Death metal, too, constitutes its own specialized language, with experts in the Commentariat ready to evaluate this Italian trio’s contribution to the discourse.

Route to the Outer Side took a while to arrive, but it enters the death metal stratosphere with a bang. Formed in 2011, Into Darkness released several demos, splits, and EPs before their first full-length. Doomed Warrior is the ‘Commander’ of this musical mission, handling vocals, a host of guitar duties (rhythm, lead, acoustic), and bass. Santo is ‘Pilot,’ propelling the Into Darkness ship with his dexterous drumming, while Filippo serves as ‘Mission Specialist,’ mixing more guitars into the melee.2 Despite their Italian heritage, Into Darkness claim Dutch death metal as their primary influence. Indeed, the razor-wire tones, thrash-doom fluctuations, and merciless rhythmic assaults recall Asphyx. I’m also reminded of Spiritual Healing-era Death, insofar as Into Darkness illuminates their tried-and-true murkiness with a tech/prog sensibility. For a more contemporary referent, one can cite the elevated nastiness of Horrendous, seeing as the band favors walloping production that isn’t too low-end heavy. The result is a familiar, consistent debut of quality death metal that rips, grooves, and punishes.

The big question is whether its concept elevates Route to the Outer Side. As an exercise in divulgative astronomy, each song emblematizes an object in the outer region of our solar system: the four gas/ice giants, the Kuiper belt, and—of course—little old Pluto. A peek at their lyrics proves that Into Darkness aren’t joking when they describe their songs as ‘divulgative’ (i.e. informative). In opener “Jupiter,” for example, Doomed Warrior shreds a squeal-laden guitar maelstrom while screaming quantitative data about the fifth planet: ‘Its mass alone, heavy might, outweighs what stands beside / Two and a half times the mass of the other planets combined.’ Like much death metal, the lyrics are generally inscrutable; in this way, the lyrics ‘don’t matter,’ as is frequently true in the subgenre. The informative lyrics are unique, however, seeming to map onto melodic shifts and key changes (“Saturn”). This mapping isn’t obvious, though, revealing a potential over-reading on my part.3 Lyrics aside, the songwriting doesn’t quite stick after the mission ends, but each individual journey excites in the moment.

At 41 minutes, Route to the Outer Side comprises a concisely expansive voyage, though it’s hard to see the galaxy for the celestial objects. One might expect the opening quartet of “Jupiter” through “Neptune” to grow increasingly icy; alas, the four giants play out as dynamic yet interchangeable onslaughts. Into Darkness sprinkles black-box-sounding voiceovers throughout, reinforcing the divulgative concept. “Halley” doesn’t feel especially ‘comet-like,’ but “Kuiper Belt” is a nice interlude into “Pluto,” which should be the closer. Its concluding guitar melody (akin to “For Whom the Bell Tolls”) fades out in album-ending fashion, whereas the closing title track is a brief rager that absolutely sounds like liftoff.

Into Darkness have created a debut that should please most fans of death metal. As long as listeners don’t go in expecting it to be cosmic or atmospheric (despite the cover), they’ll be fine. Route to the Outer Side isn’t terribly original, but it’s totally righteous. It also taught me a thing or two about our solar system, which I can’t say is a typical result of consuming death metal. I’ll definitely be looking to the skies for Into Darkness to reappear. Hopefully, the band won’t be like Uranus, taking ‘eighty-four years to reach the end / Of another lone journey.’

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Releases Worldwide: July 24th, 2026

As AMG readers surely know, death metal and science fiction go together like science and fiction. Foundational and contemporary examples alike confirm that atonal riffing, guttural growling, and machine-gun drumming pair well with spaceships, aliens, and exoplanets. On the surface, Italy’s Into Darkness fit nicely into this milieu—that cover recalls the content of Spheres (Pestilence) and the color palette of The Key (Nocturnus).1 The band insists, however, that they do not play ‘sci-fi’ or ‘spacey’ death metal. Instead, Into Darkness describe Route to the Outer Side, their long-gestating debut album, as timeless death metal with a focus on ‘divulgative astronomy,’ which translates complex science into accessible language. Death metal, too, constitutes its own specialized language, with experts in the Commentariat ready to evaluate this Italian trio’s contribution to the discourse.

Route to the Outer Side took a while to arrive, but it enters the death metal stratosphere with a bang. Formed in 2011, Into Darkness released several demos, splits, and EPs before their first full-length. Doomed Warrior is the ‘Commander’ of this musical mission, handling vocals, a host of guitar duties (rhythm, lead, acoustic), and bass. Santo is ‘Pilot,’ propelling the Into Darkness ship with his dexterous drumming, while Filippo serves as ‘Mission Specialist,’ mixing more guitars into the melee.2 Despite their Italian heritage, Into Darkness claim Dutch death metal as their primary influence. Indeed, the razor-wire tones, thrash-doom fluctuations, and merciless rhythmic assaults recall Asphyx. I’m also reminded of Spiritual Healing-era Death, insofar as Into Darkness illuminates their tried-and-true murkiness with a tech/prog sensibility. For a more contemporary referent, one can cite the elevated nastiness of Horrendous, seeing as the band favors walloping production that isn’t too low-end heavy. The result is a familiar, consistent debut of quality death metal that rips, grooves, and punishes.

The big question is whether its concept elevates Route to the Outer Side. As an exercise in divulgative astronomy, each song emblematizes an object in the outer region of our solar system: the four gas/ice giants, the Kuiper belt, and—of course—little old Pluto. A peek at their lyrics proves that Into Darkness aren’t joking when they describe their songs as ‘divulgative’ (i.e. informative). In opener “Jupiter,” for example, Doomed Warrior shreds a squeal-laden guitar maelstrom while screaming quantitative data about the fifth planet: ‘Its mass alone, heavy might, outweighs what stands beside / Two and a half times the mass of the other planets combined.’ Like much death metal, the lyrics are generally inscrutable; in this way, the lyrics ‘don’t matter,’ as is frequently true in the subgenre. The informative lyrics are unique, however, seeming to map onto melodic shifts and key changes (“Saturn”). This mapping isn’t obvious, though, revealing a potential over-reading on my part.3 Lyrics aside, the songwriting doesn’t quite stick after the mission ends, but each individual journey excites in the moment.

At 41 minutes, Route to the Outer Side comprises a concisely expansive voyage, though it’s hard to see the galaxy for the celestial objects. One might expect the opening quartet of “Jupiter” through “Neptune” to grow increasingly icy; alas, the four giants play out as dynamic yet interchangeable onslaughts. Into Darkness sprinkles black-box-sounding voiceovers throughout, reinforcing the divulgative concept. “Halley” doesn’t feel especially ‘comet-like,’ but “Kuiper Belt” is a nice interlude into “Pluto,” which should be the closer. Its concluding guitar melody (akin to “For Whom the Bell Tolls”) fades out in album-ending fashion, whereas the closing title track is a brief rager that absolutely sounds like liftoff.

Into Darkness have created a debut that should please most fans of death metal. As long as listeners don’t go in expecting it to be cosmic or atmospheric (despite the cover), they’ll be fine. Route to the Outer Side isn’t terribly original, but it’s totally righteous. It also taught me a thing or two about our solar system, which I can’t say is a typical result of consuming death metal. I’ll definitely be looking to the skies for Into Darkness to reappear. Hopefully, the band won’t be like Uranus, taking ‘eighty-four years to reach the end / Of another lone journey.’

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Dying Victims Productions
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Releases Worldwide: July 24th, 2026

Sad News: Nocturnus AD and former Morbid Angel drummer/vocalist Mike Browning has passed away at the age of 62.

Details: https://metalinsider.net/sad-news/nocturnus-ad-and-former-morbid-angel-drummer-mike-browning-has-passed-away

#MikeBrowning #MorbidAngel #Nocturnus #NocturnusAD

American musician #MikeBrowning has died 🥁 #MorbidAngel #Nocturnus #AfterDeath #drums #vocals #metal #heavymetal #music

American musician #MikeBrowning has died 🥁 #MorbidAngel #Nocturnus #AfterDeath #drums #vocals #metal #heavymetal #music

Sadist – Something to Pierce Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

Through Sadist’s classic run, from 1993’s Above the Light to 1997’s Crust, the imitable Italians carved a path around emergent death-thrash, progressive death, and groove sounds with a synth-laden and horror-guided flair as pillars of their heritage. And though their hiatus to reunion with 2007’s self-titled comeback burst forth with an aggressive energy that encapsulated their extreme and unique breed of work, the path afterward has remained fairly rocky. The freedom to be Sadist in all their never-replicated Goblin keys meets Pestilence riffs with a B-movie attitude has resulted in some excursions that felt more style than substance. In that sense, with 2022’s Firescorched, the embrace of techy fusion wrapped tightly around a carnival core fueled the promise of a fresh and focused Sadist. Can Something to Pierce, then, continue this late-career stab at glory?

For the second album in a row, Sadist has leaned on outside talents for their rhythmic core, this time absorbing the bass-drum duo of Italian progsters Fate Unburied, who have also acted as the band’s live setup.1 And in grooving lockstep, the duo rumbles about with a throbbing double-time and blasting fervor between founding guitarist and keys maestro Tommy Talamanca at his most garish and ripping. Early tracks like the breathy and bouncy “Deprived” and “Kill Devour Dissect” find that has rooted the Sadist sound in the campy world of blood splattered jungles and terror-drenched cistern ruins since 1995’s Tribe. In vocalist Trevor Nadir’s ripping howls and raspy cries, you can almost smell the rising of the undead against Talamanca’s Fulci-tinged, surrealistic compositions.

Alas, there’s not much plot to bind the horror-tinged persona that Something to Pierce wears as brazenly as it does deep death metal grooves. But that groove—that groove is, of course, persistent and slinky in a way that has always fused Talamanca’s knotted, progressive riffs and jazzy, heroic solos with an unbreakable flair. In that sense, though, Something to Pierce strikes in a uniform manner—a collection of songs that alternates between sliding riff intros and sparkling synth motifs that both bubble and bustle to gruesome and thrashing crescendos. As such, it’s the iterative nuance that colors Sadist’s stride—the swelling bass grunt of “Something to Pierce,” the snare roll to stomp of “The Sun God,” the escalating vocal grunt choir of “The Best Part Is the Brain”—and sells some memorability into the experience.

Yet, memorable or otherwise, no one has quite the attack that Sadist does, even at their most comfortable. Though veteran fans may feel at home in the swirling twists of cinematic, MENA-laced melodies, creeping ambience, and virtuosic guitar fills that lace Talamanca’s playing, newcomers may find a novel solace in the eclectic atmosphere that Something to Pierce conjures. The front half, in particular, plays more directly in its progressive death onslaught, serving jagged riff tumbles and stronger chorus structures that recapitulate in “One Shot Closer” before Sadist launches into a fuller, snake-charming glory. And, in turn, ending on the credits roll of “Respirium,” an instrumental with little ties to the aggression that pervades all that preceded it, requires full acceptance of the quirky world that Sadist builds—the one-two wobble-toned escapade of “The Best Part…” and “Nove Strade” makes it a little easier. After all, it’s only in this world that this bleep and swoon, desert scene patches, and bongo prancing make any sense.

That Sadist continues to walk undeterred along their own path now thirty-four years into existence is nothing short of a macabre miracle. Owing, in part, a peerish thanks to progenitors like Nocturnus and Atheist, the Genoese delicacy that Sadist presents has blossomed and rotted and reformed recognizable and largely uncontested. Why, in the annals of Angry Metal Guy, the Sadist tag itself directs in style only to more Sadist. So, Something to Pierce may not represent a bold new take on that lineage, neither as technical or raging or whimsical as past peaks. But Sadist, in a practiced and powerful groove, remains as dedicated and energetic as ever to their progressive and deathly craft, with ears virgin to their dastardly wiles hopefully finding something to throw them deep down a Sadist hole.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Agonia Records | Bandcamp
Websites: sadist.it | facebook.com/sadstofficial
Releases Worldwide: March 7th, 2025

#2025 #30 #AgoniaRecords #DeathMetal #Goblin #ItalianMetal #Mar25 #Nocturnus #Pestilence #ProgressiveDeathMetal #Review #Reviews #Sadist #SomethingToPierce

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
10 Metal Concept Albums That'd Make Great Movies & TV Shows
Lets finally bring these stories to the silveror smallscreen, okay?!

https://www.metalsucks.net/2024/06/03/10-metal-concept-albums-thatd-make-great-movies-tv-shows/

#DreamTheater #Queensryche #Nocturnus #DevinTownsend #Mastodon #IronMaiden #Opeth #BetweenTheBuriedAndMe #EdgeOfSanity #KingDiamond

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
10 Metal Concept Albums That'd Make Great Movies & TV Shows
Lets finally bring these stories to the silveror smallscreen, okay?!

https://www.metalsucks.net/2024/06/03/10-metal-concept-albums-thatd-make-great-movies-tv-shows/

#DreamTheater #Queensryche #Nocturnus #DevinTownsend #Mastodon #IronMaiden #Opeth #BetweenTheBuriedAndMe #EdgeOfSanity #KingDiamond

My amazing local friend owns a lovely shop with so many witchy things! He has THE BEST herbs - a lot of which he grows and harvests himself.

Also has a whole room dedicated to local crafters to sell their creations. ❤️

#LocalWitch #MetaphysicalShop #Nocturnus

My amazing local friend owns a lovely shop with so many witchy things! He has THE BEST herbs - a lot of which he grows and harvests himself.

Also has a whole room dedicated to local crafters to sell their creations. ❤️

#LocalWitch #MetaphysicalShop #Nocturnus