#veilburner — Public Fediverse posts

When I happened upon New York brutal tech troupe Thætas back in 2020, I likened their particular brand of brutalist, sprawling death metal to an alternate universe where Afterbirth were raised in a Brooklyn gutter. It was a sound I didn’t realize would resonate as strongly with me as it did, but it seemed as time passed that I wasn’t going to get another hit. Then, out of nowhere, an announcement for The Irredeemable Age graced me with a seedy cover and a nasty single to hook me in once more. Armed with one fewer member and enough angular songwriting to make AMG Himself spontaneously explode, can Thætas build an even grander structure atop their Shrines to Absurdity?

Thætas still makes a great gritty companion to the more spiritually inclined Afterbirth, but The Irredeemable Age further develops and diversifies that sound. Boasting new twangs and bends that heavily recall Veilburner (“Daytime Lantern”) and a city-dwelling skew that echoes Imperial Triumphant (“Digital Locusts”)—working in concert with familiar gnarled twists that puts them in a similar space as Defeated Sanity—Thætas subverts my penchant for accessibility and lures me ‘neath the sewer grate. At one with the slime that writhes underfoot, The Irredeemable Age is a monstrous creature composed of ugly riffs, screeching scrapes and pinches, and enough stomping rhythms to level a mountain. It brooks no quarter as it tosses me through concrete walls, with very little in the way of telegraphing or transition in between pummels (“DHUKHA,” “Summers of Hate”). With such rapid shifting and relentless violence, I’d expect the experience to feel disjointed and scattered. Thætas are smarter songwriters than that. Somehow, they crafted these 31 minutes with such intricate and intentional technicality that no piece or portion can be excised from the whole without causing a major disruption to its form and flow.

Despite its mangled anatomy, The Irredeemable Age is effortlessly enjoyable. This is in no small part due to its warm, natural, and full-bodied engineering, but its deceptively hooky songwriting too makes an airtight case. High-energy romps “Summers of Hate,” “The End of History,” and “For the Hope Devoid” invigorate The Irredeemable Age’s first half, moving with a springy agility that belies their brutal musculature. Those Veilburner twangs come in clutch at the center of the record—evoking imagery of skulls bashed against I-beams under the train tracks—and imbue stomping slams like “The Irredeemable Age” with huge personality. A delightfully clanky bass tone deepens this robust character as the record progresses, too. Additional nuance and texture develops in this meaty core before late album bangers “Stretched Paradox” and “Pillars of Fault” dress me down once more. None of that prepares for the white-hot branding that awaits with stunning closer “Digital Locusts.” A vast improvement in editing compared to Shrines’ closing track, this five-minute send off embodies all of the skills displayed up to that point and coagulates them into one final tear that makes it impossible to deny the replay button’s allure.

That replay button turned out to be a critical piece of The Irredeemable Age’s success. Despite its more aggressive and propulsive attack, The Irredeemable Age is in some ways less immediate than Shrines. Shrines to Absurdity was so weird, darkly whimsical, and tricky that it made an instant impression. Here, however, I find refinement, sophistication, and maturity. A method informs madness. The whimsical aspects of Thætas’ sound acclimate better to their surroundings, and the unhinged nature of their songwriting settles into a smoother groove. Opening track “DUKHKA” is the only exception, posing a small introductory speed bump in pacing with its staggered slams. On the other hand, it tempers expectations just enough to make the subsequent obliteration all that much more impactful. All in all, though, The Irredeemable Age houses a greater density of details and ideas that reveal themselves with multiple spins, which in turn creates deeper memorability. But it comes at a price. Listeners must invest a small measure more time with The Irredeemable Age to see its magic unfurl.

Unfurl The Irredeemable Age inevitably does. Thætas found a striking balance of memorability, technical precision, and filth that makes The Irredeemable Age an absolute joy of grotesque sounds. And thanks to tightened editing, diversified sonic elements, and refined songwriting, it only gets better the more often you spin it. So the next time you wander into sketchy back alleys sniffing for prime brutal tech death, ask for Thætas.

Rating: Great!
DR: 9 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Profound Lore Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 26th, 2026

Be honest: what do you expect experimental blackened death metal steeped in Left-Hand-Path Occultism to sound like? Dissonant? Oppressively heavy? Rhythmically complex and meandering? You wouldn’t be entirely wrong—in general, or in the particular case of Ain Sof Aur. Stereotypes exist for a reason. But Theos-Vel-Samael—serves as a vessel not only for a ceremonial invocation of wisdom-bringing darkness,1 but also the interaction between musical identity and ideology. Our assumptions about the sound and style of heavy music associated with certain fringe spiritualities are a strange mirror of the demonisation heaped upon metal overall in mainstream media from the Satanic Panic onwards, though informed at least through experience and some degree of appreciation rather than ignorance and distaste. These ideas break down when we turn to extreme metal, where Ain Sof Aur and others like them sit: a sphere defined by pushing boundaries of complexity, intensity, and heaviness—itself a natural extension of the wider genre’s core trait of subversion. Theos-Vel-Samael is an extreme metal album expressing mysticisms at least adjacent to Luciferianism, and using any preconceived notion of these ideologies obscures the music’s actuality.

Theos-Vel-Samael prompts me to wax philosophical by its very essence. Its 45-minute runtime is divided into three movements simply labelled “I,” “II,” and “III”—though Ain Sof Aur explain that each respectively embody the progressive stages of the invocation: “vision,” “force,” and “action.” This itself is a kind of stereotype, and one could speculate on whether the steady contraction of song length across the record is saying anything about the significance placed on or effort required in each of “vision,” “force,” and “action”. The way these pieces enact their theme has more in common with a wonky, progressive strain of technical death metal than it does a diabolical, vehemently evil form of black metal; in many ways, it is weirdly reminiscent of Cryptic Shift in a Veilburner kind of setting, by way of Altar of the Horned God. “I” subverted my expectations entirely with its overwhelmingly exuberant tone—albeit in an odd key and time signature for much of the time—and “II” with lengthy passages of almost mellow atmospheric strumming. This isn’t a criticism but rather the point: The literal incantations that comprise the lyrics, and the artists’ say-so, are the tethers to the occult and so the almost Hathian melodeath charges and noodling amidst croaks and roars are to be taken at face value.

Theos-Vel-Samael by AIN SOF AUR

The other reason Theos-Vel-Samael causes me to wax philosophical is that it leaves me with strangely little else to say. There is much to appreciate: M.H.S’ gargling roars; L.B.W’s vivacious drum performance; the aforementioned creative approach to marrying discordant malice and melodiousness in such experimental, otherwise malevolent metal; Ain Sof Aur can turn a melodic phrase (“I,” “III”) and dramatic flourish (“II,” “III”). Yet it all feels somehow unfocused, and so less impactful. Moments of sanguinity are somehow bled dry—sometimes through repetition, but largely simply because they fade into the surrounding fluctuations of dissonance and harmony, choppy technical tempos, and the equal minimalism of pared-back stalks and full-speed double-bass (“I” is the worst offender here). “III” is possibly the strongest of the three tracks, arguably because of its superlative brevity2 condenses if not excises the detours from what is a solid, decisively unsettling extreme death metal composition. Indeed, taken piecemeal, Theos-Vel-Samael can captivate and swallow (just after “I”‘s midpoint, the minutes just before “II”s, “III”‘s closing act), but as a whole, it functions more as an enjoyably creepy, if hazily remembered, background soundscape.

And yet what is Ain Sof Aur’s objective with Theos-Vel-Samael other than to evoke some esoteric ceremony with their interpretive music? Should the freeform nature of this expression surprise or disappoint? Was I ever going to put one of these songs on a workout playlist? The writing could use some editing to be sure, but the musical elements themselves are stellar—everything from the eerie ambience to the most violent technicality is executed assertively. I enjoy my experience of the rite even if it doesn’t convert me.

To be brief—for the first time in this review—don’t let an intimidating subgenre label, theme, or I, Voidhanger’s reputation colour your feelings about Theos-Vel-Samael. It’s creepy and unusual, but with a firm grip on more familiar death metal stylings. It doesn’t waste (much) time meandering, but it does have room to breathe. You could do far worse when dabbling in the occult.

Rating: Good
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: I, Voidhanger
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: March 27th, 2026

Death Obvious – Death Obvious Review

By Andy-War-Hall

Back in August, I went goo-goo over an avant-black duo under Transcending Obscurity called Hexrot and, as a lowly N00b, awarded their debut Formless Ruin of Oblivion a “Great” designation.1 Flash forward, and sloshing through the promo sump comes an avant-black duo under Transcending Obscurity called Death Obvious, offering their self-titled debut. Composed of vocalist Lea Lavey and everything-else-er Sima Sioux,2 this Finnish duo reveal high aspirations with claims of “crafting music as it suits their demented vision in a recklessly intuitive manner” while pitching Death Obvious for fans of visionary acts like Blut aus Nord, Deathspell Omega, Veilburner and—looky!—Hexrot. My excitement in snagging Death Obvious was, like Death Obvious’ apparent expectations, quite high. Does Death Obvious live up to either?

With Death Obvious, you can pick out distinct moments of black, death and doom metal bubbling to the surface of Death Obvious’ style-soup. Death Obvious is sworn chiefly to the blackened arts, communicating primarily through Lavey’s hideous rasps and Sioux’s tremolo riffs and blast beats, with second-wave inspired ragers “The Third Eye Burning” and “Mercury Off Axis” making no bones about their caustic, reverb-heavy attack. Death and doom are the more secondary sounds of Death Obvious, with death appearing on the chunkier, mid-paced moments of songs like “Sanctuario” and doom manifesting into spacier, drawn-out passages like the start of “The Great Gate Theory,” which put me in mind, surprisingly, of Khemmis’ Hunted. When Death Obvious’ songwriting clicks, like on album highlight “Sanctuario” or portions of closer “Catechismus for the Plagued,” sounds really do hurtle in exciting, dangerous manners that makes Death Obvious a killer listen.

Most of Death Obvious is indistinct, however, due to Death Obvious’ directionless songwriting and murky production. Death Obvious relishes in dissonance both clean (“Total Heavenly Desolation”) and dirty (“Suffer the Spectacle”). But instead of building tension or suspense, Death Obvious creates tedium through dissonance, leading to neither release nor deeper discomfort but to a monotonous drone of black metal murk. This is exacerbated by Sioux’s guitar tone, which in Death Obvious’ faster moments can sound like a totally nebulous melange of reverb. To their credit, Death Obvious’ bass-forward mixing helps mitigate this somewhat, providing plucky, crunchy bass riffs like on “The Great Gate Theory.” It does nothing, however, for the busy, opaque mix that, damn the DR score, sounds boxed-in and flat. Death Obvious’ noise problem is encapsulated right off with “Mercury Off Axis,” opening with an excruciating, high-pitched drill sound that puts me in mind of the dentist and carries on well past its intro. It’s not pleasant, Obviously the point, but it’s not interesting either.

Death Obvious falters because Death Obvious simply doesn’t bring enough to the table. Not only is structure neglected on Death Obvious, but individual songs largely have little going for them beyond the black metal basics; over-repetition is chronic on tracks like “As Absence Expands over Everything,” and monotony abounds because of it. Beyond rare instances of effective piano and non-dental sound effects, Death Obvious blurs together in limited patterns played ad nauseam, making it an effort for the listener to stay focused throughout. Like how Death Obvious’ style issues were made plain by its opener, its songwriting woes are exemplified by its eight-minute closer, “Catechismus for the Plagued.” Half of “Catechismus…” anyway: the half that is one (1) riff, two (2) chords sharing one (1) root note hammered on and off at straight eighth notes with zero variation in dynamics or accent.3 The other half with creepy keys and an otherworldly soundscape shows what Death Obvious can be when playing inspired material. The one riff is what Death Obvious mostly offers: after a while, it doesn’t really sound like anything.

Death Obvious embodies the obtuse nature of avant-garde music with little of the adventurousness of its best practitioners. Instead of sounding unbound, it feels as though Death Obvious let the songs get away from them. I’m not sure if Death Obvious needs more editing, further drafting or both, but as is I can hardly pay attention for the entirety of one listen through. Death Obvious are a talented duo, and I believe they’ll have better material down the line, as moments throughout their debut hint at better things to come. However, not only did I not go goo-goo over Death Obvious, but I’m sure I won’t be returning to it much at all.

Rating: Bad
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps MP3
Label: Transcending Obscurity Records
Websites: deathobvious.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/DeathObvious
Releases Worldwide: December 5th, 2025

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