Tooms are an Irish progressive sludge metal band and this is their second album.
Tooms impressed with their 2020 debut The Orb Offers Massive Signals, so Karst is to be approached with great interest and expectation. Tooms have delivered 48 minutes of new material, and it’s worth paying attention to. Continue reading “Tooms – Karst (Review)”
Another year, another list. 2025 followed 2024 as it was meant to, and brought with it a plethora of new metal albums to get excited about. Continue reading “Wonderbox Metal End of Year List – Best Metal of 2025”
Another year, another Damnation Festival. Has it really been 20 years? I went to the very first one waaaaay back in 2005, and a love affair was born. It has been great to watch it become one of the world’s best festivals. Kudos to the organisers for their continued passion and ability.
This edition is therefore the festival’s twentieth year and sees Damnation bigger and arguably better than ever before. It’s across two days now, and the lineup is strong in both depth and breadth. From veteran classics to newborn sensations, the festival has it all. Continue reading “Damnation Festival 2025 – BEC Arena, Manchester – 08/11/25-09/11/25 (Live Review)”
This is the third album from UK sludge/post-metallers Conjurer.
Each Conjurer album so far has been a notable one. From their 2018 debut Mire, to 2022’s Páthos, the band have show an ability to craft quality heavy music, while also progressing their sound between releases. Unself contains 45 minutes of new music from this talented act, I have been very keen to hear it. So, what does it bring us? Continue reading “Conjurer – Unself (Review)”
I fell hard for last year’s Make Them Suffer, so the opportunity to catch the band live was irresistible. Since then, I’ve only enjoyed the album more and more, and I’ve delved into their back catalogue too. In general, I’m not a huge fan of modern metalcore, but Make Them Suffer are a notable exception. They somehow manage to effectively manifest a host of ideas and sounds that I would usually not care for most of the time; they have that special something in abundance.
Anyway, fawning over with, let’s get to the show. There are three other bands first, only one – Conjurer – that I already know. Continue reading “Make Them Suffer/Resolve/Conjurer/If Not for Me – Academy 2, Manchester – 10/05/25 (Live Review)”
This is the debut album from UK sludge/post-metal band Urzah.
The Scorching Gaze contains 42 minutes of material delivered in a charismatic hybrid metallic style. Urzah combine elements of sludge, post-metal, progressive metal, doom, and hardcore/metalcore into an exemplar of heaviness that feels timeless. Continue reading “Urzah – The Scorching Gaze (Review)”
Distances are a post-metal band from the US and this is their fifth album, (assuming you count 2016’s covers album Rip Offs).
Eagerly awaited after 2018’s hugely impressive Diableries, which rightfully made it into the top 3 of my album of the year list for that year, its follow up is finally here. Abstruse contains 41 minutes of new material, and finds the band altered, but full of fire and creative passion. Continue reading “Distances – Abstruse (Review)”
This is the second album from UK sludge/post-metallers Conjurer.
This much-anticipated lab of heaviness is the 53-minute follow up to 2018’s punishing Mire.
A contemporary blend of sludge and post-metal, with elements of doom, hardcore, and progressive metal, Páthos takes the sound that Mire did so well and pushes it further, expanding on its core heaviness with a greater range of textures and emotions. It’s like a vicious nest of crushing riffs has been smashed together with a multifaceted collection of rich soundscapes, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. Continue reading “Conjurer – Páthos (Review)”
It’s time to take stock of what the extreme metal world has given us this month. As usual, there’s been some storming releases. Continue reading “Monthly Overview – the Best of March 2018”
This is the debut album from Conjurer, a sludge/post-metal band from the UK.
Here we have 44 minutes of music that combines contemporary, doom, sludge, progressive, black, and post-metal. The material on Mire offers up everything from slow, monolithic crawls, to focused blast beats, meaning that Conjurer cover Continue reading “Conjurer – Mire (Review)”
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