#sentient-ruin-laboratories — Public Fediverse posts

What do you listen to death metal for? Are you a riff-centric fellow? Do you prioritize emotional catharsis? Do you like super artistic statements or are you here for a collection of banging songs? Spain’s Altarage have carved out quite a career for themselves over the last decade, beginning life as a much more predatory Portal before branching out into elements of drone and audible disease, but never wavering in their commitment to the savage and violent. Seventh album Cogwheel is rooted in the plight of the industrial worker, a major thematic shift for a typically ethereal band. I’ve had the misfortune of working in a manufacturing warehouse for a few years, and I was very curious to hear how a group rooted in cosmic horror would handle such a down-to-earth topic, so clock in with me and let’s get ready for a long day at the office.

Despite being no slouch in requisite bursts of speed and blasts, the overall vibe of Cogwheel is morose and plodding. The chords are foul, with the constant smashing of Primitive Man and a bone-crushingly heavy guitar tone that sounds like slowly being buried under liquid cement.1 It’s an album as gray as its cover, with cuts like “Wielder” offering up the methodicalness of Godflesh while drummer Phlegeton alternates between lightning assaults and drum-machine impressions. Look to “Future Wreck” for an industrial vibe, with mid-paced chords crashing together like factory gears, and Bassist Mikel Glez rumbling away under the noise. That theme of exhaustion and weariness is deeply embedded within the album’s DNA, as each cut beats you into submission over and over again.

Taken from the perspective of an average consumer of tunes, Cogwheel is a remarkably frustrating release. Songs are overly long, riffs are obnoxiously repetitive, and the drone elements are an annoyance in place of actual music. There’s an overreliance on quarter-note clanging, such as in “Not a Proper Burial”, (a gosh darn shame, as it also features one of the most devastating, and devastatingly short, riffs on the whole album), and “Peso Muerto” ends on completely atonal guitar scrapping in half notes for a full minute. There’s an unnecessary Sun 0))) tribute in all eight minutes of “1988” which does nothing for the album except being a track you regretfully recall existing. “Ichor” kicks off with nauseating strums and more half-note popping before evolving into a full-blown “Portal take you to your heaviest night at the opera” impression, with vocalist Javier going all in on vibrato-laced cleans which don’t quite suit the music underneath. And let’s not forget the three-minute ending of more string screeches, continuing the disquiet and the discontent.

And yet, when considered through the lens of what Altarage set out to accomplish, there’s an argument to be made that Cogwheel is an artistic joy.2 Every major criticism hurled at it suddenly becomes an important puzzle piece when viewed as the depiction of the overworked and spiritually malnourished industrial laborer. The riffs sound beaten and defeated, much like the broken factory employee. The few leads sound dismal, angry, and bitter, much like (presumably) that worker’s inner being. The songs are needlessly excessive in length, much like a shift, and the actual music repeatedly descends into mindless cacophony, much like the background noise emanating without remorse from the machines all around. Without pounding the metaphor to dust, Cogwheel offers up an auditory example of “commit to the bit”, taken to the most extreme maximalism. “Industrial Offering” could make a great soundtrack for the line of workers slowly trudging into another abysmal day, clocking in and disappearing under the factory smoke, leaving behind them their dreams and aspirations for another round of soul-crushing misery. Suddenly, all of Cogwheel’s points of agitation reveal themselves as purposeful and impassioned, carefully arranged for peak affect on the focused listener.

What then, is the honest reviewer to do? Cogwheel isn’t for casual listening; there are only a few riffs on here of any note, and there’s no reason for it to be seventy-five minutes long. And yet, major credit must be given for crafting such an album, where what would be extreme blemishes in the hands of another band turn into a well-thought-out artistic presentation. And so, we return to the original question of why we listen to death metal. Let the arbitrary score be a starting point for you, dear reader, to answer for yourself. If you’re seeking something engaging, violent, and immediate, deduct a full point and keep it moving, as there’s little for you here. If you appreciate music as a transcendental art piece, add a full point and stand in wonder at a thoughtful creation from a very forward-thinking band. For my part, I can’t find myself reaching back to this record much, particularly over The Approaching Roar, but I still must declare Altarage’s mission a resounding success.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Sentient Ruin Laboratories
Website: Official Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: July 31st, 2026

Ritual Ascension – Profanation of the Adamic Covenant Review

By Dear Hollow

Profanation of the Adamic Covenant represents catacombs dripping with putridity and filth, the blasphemy called against the heavens from far below ground. It’s an upheaval from beneath our feet, the crawling and coagulant rot that spreads from abyss to abyss. The filth and blood clots our eyes, hearts, and minds, driving us deeper and deeper into the madness until our lungs are filled with mud. Ritual Ascension is transcendence and enlightenment achieved through the reveling and swallowing of the grime-soaked entrails through a vicious and ancient ritual, the lumbering deity whose mammoth footfalls and cloud of plague require payment in full. It’s a ritual to the god of the mud and disease, and a fist slammed into the underside of heaven.

Death/doom has many heads, but the one Ritual Ascension rears may be the ugliest. The Denver collective, alongside sharing all three members with Aberration, is comprised of members of Suffering Hour, Void Rot, Feral Light, and Annihilation Cult, promising a psychedelic affair inspired just as much by the classic death/doom acts of yore as the more experimental devastators. You’ll certainly find homages to Incantation, diSEMBOWELMENT, and Winter in its ten-ton doom hammers, but atop it is an opaque and occult breed of dissonant insanity reminiscent of Portal and a palpable filth only touched by the likes of Stenched or Rotpit, only kept in the realm of humanity by a palpable groove that reminds me of Ataraxie. Ritual Ascension offers the depths in ways few can, a collective far greater than the sum of its parts.

Crawling, slimy chaos is one hell of a first impression. Overload of down-tuned and filthy tremolo guide mammoth processions, whose dissonant constructions and atonal dirges provide a hypnotic otherworldliness. As displayed lumbering out of the gates, its attack is slimy, slow, and devastating, ultimately a feeling or a place rather than a collection of highlights – as any good doom album ought to be. From the subtle and simple chord progressions that dominate more minimalist pieces (“Womb Exegesis”) to the groovy and monolithic chugs that grace the climaxes of lengthy runtimes (“Pillars of Antecedence,” “Cursed Adamic Tongues”), interspersed by passages of blastbeats ranging from blazing to contemplative. DH’s vocals are a crucial element to the album’s subterranean and blasphemous atmosphere, ranging from the commanding chthonic bellows you expect from this breed of devastation to the tortured howls and groans more indicative of black metal.

If the first half of Profanation is subtle and crawling, then the second exists as utterly filthy slow-motion violence. I was initially disappointed that the Portal-isms were not as handily felt among the tracks of the first half, only gleaming in sporadic moments and within traditionally ominous diminished chord progressions. However, crossing into the second half with the scalding “Consummation Rites” and “Kolob (At the Throne of Elohim),” caustic slow-motion Ulcerate leads collide with the filthiest riffs Impetuous Ritual could muster, with DH’s most charismatic performances of the album. Unhinged and cutthroat are not words typically associated with doom, but the layers of overwhelm and dissonance meet the criteria with a bloodthirstiness and underlying craving for brutality. Looking back, it would have been relatively easy to incorporate the dissonant intensity in the first couple of tracks, but their later full fruition after a crawling crescendo makes them feel even more painful and overwhelming.

Even though the dissonance was not as immediate as I anticipated and the necessity for the patience required for this kind of beast goes without saying for its atmosphere – rather than a collection of songs – Profanation of the Adamic Covenant is transcendent. Encapsulating that crawling dread and ritualistic weight, monolithic groove, and dissonant layers in a tidy forty-eight minutes and held together by the dedication to unholy filth, it offers bounties aplenty for those willing to wade through the offal and mire. Bolstered by impressive performances in unpredictable percussion, riffs both mammoth and caustic, and vocals tortured and menacing, Ritual Ascension offers one hell of a debut. Get swallowed by the filth.

Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Sentient Ruin Laboratories
Website: instagram.com/ritualascension
Releases Worldwide: February 28th, 2025

#2025 #40 #Aberration #AmericanMetal #AnnihilationCult #Ataraxie #AvantGardeMetal #DeathDoomMetal #diSEMBOWELMENT #DissonantDeathMetal #Feb25 #FeralLight #ImpetuousRitual #Incantation #OldSchoolDeathMetal #Portal #ProfanationOfTheAdamicCovenant #Review #Reviews #RitualAscension #Rotpit #SentientRuinLaboratories #Stenched #SufferingHour #Ulcerate #VoidRot #Winter

Aphotic – Abyssgazer [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

By Dolphin Whisperer

Evil. No matter what flowery progressive, flamboyantly triumphant path metal may weave, a large part of what attracted many of us, and a large part of what inspires creators, rests in distilling evil into dark vibrations, wallowing wails, and crooked melodies. Previously in this mindset, Italy’s Nicolò Brambilla (voice, synths1) and Giovanni Piazza (guitars) have presented this energy with cosmic funeral doom act Fuoco Fatuo, and contrastingly with the bursting and churning riffcraft of Brambilla’s 90s-inspired death metal troupe Ekpyrosis. Aphotic,2 born of this grime-crusted pedigree, swings with a ritualistic fervor from ripping blast to reverb-drenched howl to conjure the unique, reeking atmosphere that pervades Abyssgazer. Evil lurks in every phrase.

As such, Abyssgazer presents as the kind of echoing incantation that must ring through ears from first to last note. No mere synthesis of the acts who fed Aphotic into existence, this sometimes blackened, sometimes funeral doom-weighted, always death metal assembly expresses itself in a peerless manner. The cavernous kick pummels that split air to render space for discordant guitar screeches recall the thunderous energy of a lurching Immolation. The breakaways into bouncing rhythms with layered and resonant vocal chants recall the anthemic black metal of Rotting Christ, albeit with a bend toward the psychedelic. The hypnotic kit hammering and looped lead melodies exist as a twisted Godflesh instance manifested as a death metal sacrifice. In hands less mindful, and in engineering fine-tuned by Esoteric’s Greg Chandler—a mind of similar persuasion but much longer in phrasing—Abyssgazer could have flown off its experimental rails.

Instead, disarmingly so, Abyssgazer flows naturally from idea to idea, with each long-form statement having a strong central identity. A trio of world-building breaths intersperse the heaviest moments: “Endzeit I,” a slow percussive build before a shattering blast beat open; “Endzeit II,” an eerie, reverberating acoustic segue before an even squirmier post-informed eruption; “Endzeit III,” a menacing synth-scraping the hisses toward the punishing conclusion. As contemporaries to Bölzer and Tongues, Aphotic finds its death metal rooting not in loud, chunky chords but rather in snaking progressions that rumble through low-end tremolo drills (“Spectral Degredation,” “Depths Call Depths”) and whip with phasing arpeggio force (“Cosmivore,” “Chasmous”). Nothing summons the dark lord like a lumbering, hazy legato.

On early listens, though, equally due to loaded layers of ambient electronic and modulated metal elements, Abyssgazer may struggle to brand its choices into memory. It’s the journey that forms first: the brutalist bashing that kicks off the descent (“Spectral Degradation”), the bellow and choir that won’t stop ringing (“Deathward and Beyond,” “Horizonless”), the summoning dirge that announces collapse (“Chasmous”). The swinging riffs and recursive melodies stitch these points together (“Cosmivore,” “Abyssgazer”). Until a martial spirit reveals itself along the path (“Cosmivore,” “Horizonless”). Everything always moves forward.

Abyssgazer reads less like a grand novel and more like a short story, ultimately. Its tools well worn and non-gratuitous, the time that elapses over this debut’s course never feels overstayed. Aphotic has the power to warp time in their meticulous and death-carved hands. So as exciting as Abyssgazer lands, and much, in the same way, it lures the listener along, the next step along this band’s career promises even more.

Tracks to Check Out: “Spectral Degradation,” “Depths Call Depths,” “Chasmous”3

#2023 #Abyssgazer #Aphotic #AtmosphericDeathMetal #Bedsore #BlackMetal #BlackenedDeathMetal #Bolzer #DeathMetal #Ekpyrosis #Esoteric #FuocoFatuo #Godflesh #ItalianMetal #NuclearWinterRecords #PostDeathMetal #RottingChrist #SentientRuinLaboratories #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2023 #Tongues

Stuck in the Filter – September’s Angry Misses

By Kenstrosity

Fall is upon us at last. Here at my station, located far far away from AMG HQ due to my various injustices against the Score Counter, taste, and metal credibility over the past five years of writership, I monitor our minions’ progress scouring the headquarters’ overtaxed filtration system. As the leaves and cool mists infiltrate the guts of the machine to mingle with the stagnant refuse which lines the chutes and coats our poor, unfortunate laborers, I use my remote-controlled cattle-prod-equipped drone to motivate and maintain pace. We have a deadline to reach after all!

Ah, who am I kidding?! Deadlines are for poseurs, and we are well-known specialists of the late post. I just like torturing my subjects until they cough up the goods. And cough up they always do! So now, please, sit, and enjoy the spoils of not my labor, the best of the pretty good from September 2023!

Kenstrosity’s Mildewed Masses

King’s Rot // At the Gates of Adversarial Darkness [September 22nd, 2023 – Hypnotic Dirge Records]

It’s been a fairly mediocre year for standard black metal in the House ov Ken. Most of the time, the good stuff hybridized with other things like death metal (Úlfúð), psychedelia (DHG), or power metal (Moonlight Sorcery). Alberta, Canada’s King’s Rot doesn’t quite change that, but they make a valiant effort of it with their sophomore outing, At the Gates of Adversarial Darkness. Its production marks a good start, perfectly straddling the fence between murky rawness and sparkling clarity. This in turn bolsters the quality of the music, which straddles the fence between melodicism and wretchedness. I’m most engaged whenever King’s Rot kick into high gear, evoking bands like Vimur and Imperialist, except this material prefers to revel in the hellish flames of the underworld rather than the coronas of distant stars (“Blazing Winds of Torment,” “At the Gates of Adversarial Darkness,” “Last Dance for the Eternal Flame”). However, they could use more of that perilous verve and swagger in those areas where the band take their sweet time building up to a blistering fury (as with the Cloak-esque “Twilight Breath Incantation” and “Obscure Awakenings”) in order to keep my interest rabid from start to finish. In sum, you could do much worse than At the Gates of Adversarial Darkness for your fiery, but chilling black metal fix.

Aortha // Monolit [September 8th, 2023 – Self Release]

How many vocalists is too many vocalists? International supergroup Aortha bring a new scope and scale to the question with their groovy heavy/thrash/power metal project by employing six individuals for mic duty (Exhorder‘s Kyle Thomas, Adamantia’s Diego Valdez, Voivod‘s Denis Belanger Snake, ex-Temperance’s Alessia Scolletti, Laurenne/Louhimo’s Netta Laurenne, ex-Scar Symmetry‘s Christian Älvestam). Supported by Jacob Umansky on bass, Hannes Grossman on drums, and Predrag Glogovac on guitars, Aortha’s debut LP Monolit boasts insane levels of groove, hook, and swagger. Bangers like “Those That Should Not Exist,” “Last of Our Kind,” “Forging the Locus” and “Divine Future” are guaranteed to kick your ass and take your lunch money, while every vocalist gets their chance to spit in your face (although it can be difficult to pick out who is who with 100% accuracy). It’s nearly impossible not to bob my head along with these tunes, as transitions constantly reveal a new trick up the group’s sleeve, whether that be another ripping verse hook (“Keep the Dream”), a sharp riff that has no business being as fun or interesting as it is (“Last of Our Kind”), or some fancy percussive work that one would expect from the world’s most sought-after drummer. It might be cheesy in places, ESL is everywhere, and some songs can feel a little long after repeat spins (“When All Around You is Madness”), but Monolit remains one of my most fun, compelling, and deceivingly cohesive surprises this year. You owe it to yourselves to try it!

Dolphin Whisperer’s Trench Treasures

SATSURIKU ROBOT // NO THRASH METAL, NO LIFE! [September 8th, 2023 – WormHoleDeath]

No Thrash Metal, No Life!—demanding and straightforward. It’s easy to imagine that the untested Japanese act would have constructed this outing as an homage to the blue-collar hammer-on, hammer-off tunes we all love so dearly.1 And to a certain extent the opening riffs to the Slayer-touched “THRASH NEVER DIE” and the Sodom-grooving “MAD THRASHER” have a normalcy to them. However, that basic appearance dissolves rapidly against a cranked-out, clangy-ass snare and a vocalist who’s channeling both a cat in heat and a pig greased for the chase. Honestly, I have no idea what the fuck he’s doing. On tracks like “殺戮ロボット – SATSURIKU ROBOT ” and “CARRY ON” he drops character for brief moments while channeling a punky bellow akin to fellow countrymen SEX MACHINEGUNS, which gives a little respite to his madness. For the most part though, he squirts and squeals with a rabid conviction while his bandmates do their best to churn out solid sing-along gang shouts amidst mighty solos (“ROBOT IN THE PANDEMIC,” “NO THRASH METAL, NO LIFE!”). Similar to the out-of-place nature of the hokey, nursery rhyme infusions you hear in a Macabre album, much of what SATSURIKU ROBOT accomplishes throughout this thoughtful mess of a debut should not work, but it does and it’s catchy as hell. Though I don’t think these folks could pull it off twice with as much shock value, but that matters little when you can enjoy this sneakily not-thrash ode to thrash. So what’re you waiting for? NO THRASH METAL, NO LIFE!!!

Vibora // Zaldi Beltza [September 29th, 2023 – Zegema Beach Records]

Anthemic, throat-ripping, cathartic as a cold bath with the curtains drawn—Zaldi Beltza (The Black Horse) is the skramz you need in your life. With a bass overdriven for noise rock and a scrapped mic that reminds me of regionally-adjacent sadbois Tenue or ragers Crossed,2 Vibora’s brand of screeching metalcore comes with highlights that swing effortlessly between tough guy throw-downs and major swing crescendos (“Eraikin Zurie,” “Le Fleur”). Though Vibora drops tempo for a few melancholy post-hardcore romps (“DANA,” “La Casa, 20”), the burn through Zaldi Beltza’s nine tracks in twenty-three minutes never feels too long drawn on its less aggressive elements. Appropriate levels of hissing amp feedback and nut-shaking bass (“La Casa, 8,” “Ez Ziguten Maitatzen Irakatsi”) ensure that these Basque core-kiddies never stray too far from a forward-moving path. I gotta level with you though, this is true screamo, and if you’re not accustomed to the fuzz-filtered, nasally, digging yelp that typically accompanies this world, Vibora doesn’t do anything to change that. But Zaldi Beltza, in its close-to-roots expression of bright-chord Daïtro-flavored post-hardcore with extra hardcore delivers a modern sad-ggression that’s building a movement of its own.

Thus Spoke’s Tarnished Trinkets

Ash Prison // Future Torn [September 22nd 2023 – Sentient Ruin Laboratories]

Ash Prison are basically everything you want blackened industrial music to be—or at least they’re everything I want it to be. This weird, warpy, wacky work sees resonant, electrified bass wrap around jittery tempos, accompanied by echoing, snarling croaks, and a plethora of other strange sounds. You’ve taken the pill the shifty guy by the club toilets gave you, that you probably shouldn’t have, and now the gothic electronica is warping around you, and the walls are starting to melt. The come up was a bit aggressive (“Archangel”), but at the same time, incredibly, weirdly danceable, in a jagged sort of way, as is much of Future Torn. And the way groovy, boppy beats slide in out of the noise (“Death Reborn,” “No Return,” “Collapse”) is almost as unsettling as the heavier, actually scary stuff. This mood swing happens whiplash from song to song, “Voidhead,” “Black Horizon,” and “Weep in my Shadow” each smash onto the scene with fast, clipped tempos and a lot of static and distortion. And then there’s “Scorn,” whose skipping, echoing voice sample and scarily low hum create a spine-chillingly powerful sense of dread before the beat picks up to turn it into a mad, unhinged bop. This album terrifies me, and I love it. Why not give it a try?

Steel Druhm’s Seasonal Slashing:

Lord of Shadows // Echoes of Yore [September 1st, 2023 – Meuse Music Records]

Lord of Shadows is the work of one Mike Lamb, and on the debut full-length Echoes of Yore, the multi-instrumentalist tackles the Peaceville sound made famous in the 90s by My Dying Bride and Anathema. And to make sure you know he’s deadly serious about his passion project, he recruited none other than My Dying Bride’s Aaron Stainthorpe to handle vocals for him, alongside Heike Langhans (Remina, Light Field Reverie, ex-Draconian). Over 42 minutes, Lamb and guests paint the night pitch black with effective Gothic doom loaded with drama, pathos, and despondency. The man knows his chosen genre well and appoints it with a captivating array of forlorn riffs, weeping pianos, ethereal female vocals, and booming death croaks. The songsmithing is above average and the lengthy compositions keep you in thrall as they suck all the joy from your downtrodden soul. Cuts like “Faith of Thy Beloved” and “At the End of Our Eclipse” will win you over to the morose cause, and the nine-minute “Through Memories, I Gave Her Life” will carry you off to sadboi glory. Is it derivative of its source material? Naturally, but the adroit blend of My Dying Bride and female-forward Gothic doom like Draconian works well. With Winter banging at the door, this is the optimal time of year for what Lord of Shadows are selling, so stock up now! DOOM!

#2023 #Adamantia #Aortha #AshPrison #AtTheGatesOfAdversarialDarkness #BlackMetal #CanadianMetal #Cloak #Crossed #Daïtro #DHG #EchoesOfYore #Exhorder #FutureTorn #HeavyMetal #HypnoticDirgeRecords #Imperialist #Industrial #IndustrialMetal #KingSRot #LaurenneLouhimo #LordOfShadows #Macabre #MelodicBlackMetal #Metalcore #Monolit #MoonlightSorcery #NoThrashMetalNoLife #PowerMetal #SatsurikuRobot #ScarSymmetry #Screamo #SelfReleased #SentientRuinLaboratories #Sep23 #Slayer #Sodom #StuckInTheFilter #Temperance #Tenue #ThrashMetal #Úlfúð #VIbora #Vimur #Voivod #WormHoleDeath #ZaldiBeltza #ZegemaBeachRecords