In July’s best metal, Dephosphorus look to the stars, Wytch Hazel’s heavy metal anachronism remains delightful, and Hell keep raging with drone/doom malice.
Here we are at the second half of 2025, and July is shaping up to be a busy month. On the more traditional style, Wytch Hazel dig deep into the hard rock and heavy metal tradition, while Phantom Spell opt for a more progressive rock-inclined approach. Diving into the extreme depths, Floating conjure an ambitious and brave incorporation of post-punk, while Décypral and Disembodiment unveil the Quebecois take on old-school death metal.
On the grinding side, Kontusion relish Repulsion’s teachings, and Dephosphorus pave their way through the astrogrind narrative. On the slower side, Eternal Darkness plunge into death/doom despair before disbanding, Venus Star add a blackened flourished on their funereal take, and Hell continue to torture all with their drone vision. For the more adventurous, Sigh re-record Hangman’s Hymn and Blind Equation deliver Nintendocore frenzy in all its four-bit glory. That and much more, so dig in! – Spyros Stasis
Axis of Light – To the Great Unbearing North (Independent)
Axis of Light first emerged from the lo-fi, raw edge of black metal, a sound rooted in Ildjarn’s primitivism and Akitsa’s punk defiance. This path reached its peak with their 2020 self-titled record. That changes here, and the shift in artwork tells you everything. Gone are the stark black-and-white visuals of their earlier work; in their place, a sweeping landscape bathed in colour, a visual mirror to the band’s transformation. As soon as “Banished Beneath the Tide” kicks in, expansive waves of feedback open up imagined vistas, less annihilating than all-encompassing; they mature from violence to awe.
The toolkit remains the same; the lo-fi perspective, the raw production, and the unyielding riffing are all present. Yet, the end result is vastly different. The continuous riffing feels smooth, distorted, but not piercing. In crafting a naturalistic scenery, Axis of Light now lean toward the windswept grandeur of Paysage d’Hiver, crafting not just songs but elemental environments. Without for a second resorting to folkloric elements, they are able to employ these long-form, stunning melodies to capture a moving and deeply emotive essence.
While fragments of the past still linger in the punk-ish beating of “Across Glacial Valleys Deep” and the DSBM-adjacent “Mirrored in the Screes and Stone”, the dominant mood is one of yearning and drift. The emotions shift like the artwork’s colors, moving from the sorrowful passages of the opening track to the bittersweet, triumphantly pyrrhic ascent of “To the Great Unbearing North”. This is Axis of Light, taking their sound to an impressionistic level, abstracting away the black metal structure and rawness to reveal its textural essence.
The entire record evokes Turner’s Valley of Aosta, where the human presence is still visible but engulfed by forces vast and unknowable, rendered in swirling color and chaos. That is the terrain Axis of Light now inhabit. – Spyros Stasis
Blind Equation – A Funeral in Purgatory (Prosthetic)
While Nintendocore, a fusion of chiptune and eight-bit videogame music with elements of extreme metal and punk, has been around since the early 2000s, recent years have seen an explosion of bands whose style is both an evolution of the genre and something new altogether. Similar to their Prosthetic Records labelmates Thotcrime, Chicago’s Blind Equation play cybergrind-adjacent music that can borrow from and transform into a myriad of other styles at any moment, ranging from the violent breakcore of the Igorrr variety to sentimentally charged emo and nu metal.
The result is a wild burst of colors, moods, and emotions, composed with a heavy sonic makeup but left cradling an endearingly soft core. A Funeral in Purgatory mirrors many of the intangible things that make albums like Cocojoey’s STARS minor masterpieces, just with an accent placed on denser shapes and metallic edges rather than electronic elements. This is music of the present, yet one that seems built for the future. – Antonio Poscic
Cénotaphe – Chimères (Nuclear War Now!)
Cénotaphe’s black metal is rooted in the French scene’s traditionalism, rejecting deviation as distraction. Their debut, Monte Verità, embodies this conviction, and Chimères walks the same path. The thundering riffs are the defining characteristic, an heirloom inherited from generations of black metal bands that came before.
The opening track sees this excruciating explosion of energy burst in all directions. It becomes a locomotive, surging through the glacial veins of “L’Île de Rien”. Its relentless force imbues the track with persistent momentum and epic scope. It is a graphic affair, capable of projecting angst and tension. The final riffs of “Nitescence” see this massive momentum take form, only to become completely overwhelming through the sheer brutality of “Dans La Poix des Barathres”.
Yet, Cénotaphe do not operate in a singular gear. Their melodic inclination often stems from a medieval-style approach. This informs their blackened steel with a sense of grandeur and ancestry. A message coming from the dark past, echoing through the clean background vocals of “Titans” and “Sous Les Fourches Manichéennes”.
Economically placed keys and synths, used sparingly, help guide the shifts in form. It is best presented in “Le Carnage Des Chimères” where the initial mournful motif shines through the martial procession. It then erupts into a glorious battle cry, its stunning melodies becoming deafening in the dark space. It feels like a narration of folklore and history, of forgotten times and lost memories. This is the space that Cénotaphe occupy.
Through their black metal, they evoke a sense of magic and wonder, one that has been lost in recent times. They act like Durtal, Huysmans’ seeker of meaning beyond modern decay, leading the listener away from a world that has lost its inherent meaning, and into the darkness là-bas. – Spyros Stasis
Décryptal – Simulacre (Me Saco Un Ojo)
Considering Disembodiment (see below) and Décryptal, Québec’s death metal scene seems to be going through a form of a renaissance at the moment. On their debut, Simulacre, we find the foursome playing some mean and nasty death metal with occasional touches of dissonance, a sense of entropic discombobulation, and gloomy doominess in the otherwise bumbling cuts.
Opener “La bête lumineuse” is a case in point. The cut acts as a blueprint for the album, with a swell of throat-sung vocals blossoming into furious, supremely heavy death metal that circles and thrashes as if in a fit of frenzy. The extremely varied but consistently excellent riffs buzz and thunder, the rhythmic lines have a deliciously plump body, and the growls are as delightfully disgusting as ever. Like Grave Infestation, Corpus Offal, and Vacuous, Décryptal belong to the vanguard of contemporary death metal, inspired by old-school tropes but fiercely looking ahead. – Antonio Poscic
Dephosphorus – Planetoktonos (Nerve Altar / 7 Degrees)
Per aspera ad astra, through hardship to the stars. This ancient motto encapsulates the duality in Dephosphorus’s cosmic vision. The Greek astrogrind band have always viewed the cosmos as something vast and unknowable, but at the same time, they have refused to succumb to nihilism. Case in point is their new full-length album, Planetoktonos, which explores the idea of a future utopia where humanity lives in equilibrium with its surroundings.
It is a fitting setting for their death metal and grindcore foundation, which soon explodes through polemic grooves in “Living In a Metastable Universe”. The latent Bolt Thrower grooves lead the way, morphing into rampant grindcore blasts with “Hunting for Dyson Spheres”, a mode that invokes an urgent and fervent essence to “After the Holocaust”.
What is key for Dephosphorus is their versatility and flow. “The Triumph of Science and Reason” transitions from grindcore roots to old-school hardcore and mid-paced death metal. This modularity allows them to easily traverse a range of sonic realms, from Breach-like post-hardcore contortions in “Pale Veins”, to Knut’s pummeling density, to the more chaotic angularity of mathcore (“Calculating Infinity”), and to fumey, blackened psychedelia (“Hunting for Dyson Spheres”).
The cherry on top is Miltos Schimatariotis’s electronica injections, which provide a hallucinatory and otherworldly effect. Rather than clash with the band’s brutal core, these electronic elements enhance it, pulling chaos outward into deeper, more hallucinatory zones that echo the infinite scale of their lyrical concerns. Thus, Planetoktonos is another triumph in Dephosphorus’s canon, a cosmic assault that refuses despair, instead aiming its rage at entropy and emerging, defiantly, with hope intact. – Spyros Stasis
Disembodiment – Spiral Crypts (Everlasting Spew)
Along with 20 Buck Spin, Italy’s Everlasting Spew have enjoyed an almost faultless record in discovering and giving a chance to the gruesomest, filthiest, and most vile of death metal bands. Spiral Crypts is Quebecois Disembodiment’s debut that really doesn’t feel like a first attempt, but a fully fleshed-out vision of musicians who know exactly what they want and how they want to do it.
As a result, there are no weak moments across the eight pieces here, which see swirling brutality descend down a staircase to hell, before slowing down into harrowing ambience. Make no mistake, this is gnarly music, but with a sense for building spectral, outright demonic-sounding atmospheres that would make many a dark ambient artist envious. It’s fitting, then, that closer “Sentient Inorganic Mess” features a snippet from John Carpenter’s The Thing—a film as vicious, atmospheric, and relentless as everything on this album. – Antonio Poscic
Eternal Darkness – Eternal Darkness (Pulverised)
Eternal Darkness spent 35 years working toward their debut full-length, and in trve (yes, with a “v”) underground fashion, what do they do just before its release? They disband! Putting the jokes aside, the death/doom band’s limited output did not stand in the way of them becoming a near-mythical presence, following their Ceremony of Doom and Suffering demos. So what does their self-titled debut sound like? Like it’s still 1992, before Paradise Lost started to murk their sound with classic heavy metal tropes, and the times when Winter was leading all into darkness.
Eternal Darkness set the foundation in the death metal scene, much like Rippikoulu defined their identity. Theirs is a slow polemic, taking the death metal tropes and slowing them down to their liking, as with the knuckle-dragging procession of “Pungent Awakening”. They build on this foundation with majestic, almost grandiose flourishes. The keyboards near the end of “Into Crematory” call this over-the-top perspective, while their pace and groove in “Funeral” recall epic imagery from lost battles and terrible wars.
While it is a bitter cocktail, they enrich their minimalism with moving guitar work. This spans from the sweeter, melodic doom of “The Beyond” and the sorrowful parts of “Pungent Awakening”, to the infernal twists of “When Life Ends” and “Death Above All”. This nastier face is complete when Eternal Darkness retreat into deconstructive minimalism, in the case of “Grief”, where the track is stripped down to near nothingness, and especially “Til Death” and its drone-adjacent punishment. It is this overarching ability that makes Eternal Darkness an excellent last (and first) entry in their full-length discography. – Spyros Stasis
Floating – Hesitating Lights (Transcending Obscurity)
Floating’s debut, The Waves Have Teeth, revealed ambition beneath its raw exterior. While the Uppsala, Sweden act tinker in a well-defined death metal subspace, characterized by progressive leanings à la late Morbus Chron, they incorporate post-punk influences (“Pile of Birds” and “The Floating Horror”). Floating’s sophomore full-length, Hesitating Lights, now expands on this dimension, with the opening track “I Reached the Mew” forging a cohesive blend of death metal and post-punk.
The Cure‘s delicate, droning melodies juxtapose over the blastbeat-driven and tremolo-picking stampede. It is a spectacular collision, reintroduced in parts of “Hesitating Lights – Harmless Fires”, where the graphic post-punk contradicts the abrasive Demilich-ian onslaught. This union takes different forms. In their darker moments, the darkwave melodies add an elegant interplay to the despairing death metal bends in “Still Dark Enough”.
Similarly, “The Waking” combines krautrock strangeness with death metal blasts, enveloped in a shoegaze ambiance. In that moment, it is the progressive inclinations that take over, a phenomenon also evident in the mid-tempo stampede of “The Wrong Body”. Still, the album occasionally falters when its two peaks—death metal aggression and post-punk dreaminess—fail to connect seamlessly.
“Cough Choir” brings in a My Bloody Valentine tone, but the earlier wonder is missing; the track is reduced to a feedback-roaring menace with death metal growls. It is a similar case with “Grave Dog”, where the progression shifts from death metal to post-punk and then back to death metal. “Exit Bag Song” follows the same strategy. Still, it offers better transitions in this case, taking the form of blackened riff mechanics that ease the sentiment of disassociation between death metal aggression and post-punk dreaminess.
That’s not to say Hesitating Lights fails. Far from it. At its height, it’s a stunning and near-unique fusion of opposing impulses. However, when Floating lose the grip on the transition between death metal ferocity and post-punk fragility, the spell weakens. Still, the vision is bold, and it’s clear the group are steadily forging a new, hybrid form. They may not have fully arrived yet, but their trajectory promises something remarkable. – Spyros Stasis
Haxprocess – Beyond What Eyes Can See (Transcending Obscurity)
Although Blood Incantation’s recent mainstream success means we’re likely to see an influx of progressive, psychedelically-tinged copycats, Haxprocess have been transforming death metal in a similar but not quite identical way for five years at this point. Still decidedly spacey and sci-fi in tone, the Jacksonville, Florida, outfit subscribe to a darker, bombastic, and brutal death metal sound, then arrange it into twisted formations, as if taking a healthy dose of LSD had made Morbid Angel and Immolation explode their songs into a myriad labyrinthine paths.
Beyond What Eyes Can See, Haxprocess’s sophomore LP, takes all the promising elements of their debut, EPs, and demos—including the segments of mind-scrambling technicality and pure thrash brutality—and encases them into four long but never drab tracks. In fact, there’s so much going on in every moment, in every inspired interplay of shapeshifting riffs, throbbing bass lines, irregular drum patterns, and guttural growls, that the album feels even shorter than it is. More and soon, please. – Antonio Poscic
Hell – Submersus (Sentient Ruin)
Following Mizmor and Hell’s collaborative Alluvion and A.L.N’s ambient reinterpretation, Mnemonic, it feels inevitable that M.S.W. would re-emerge. Submersus, the first full-length since Hell’s 2017 self-titled masterwork, and their first via Sentient Ruin, does not stray from the path. It digs deeper. Right from the opening seconds of “Hevy”, the sludge shovels kick you in the face. It is a fuzzy affair, the detached, slow-moving chords and the screaming vocals ripping apart the fabric of reality, reducing it to an infernal soundscape. “Mortem” and then “Bog” continue this mutated, Black Sabbathian tradition.
Yet, Hell’s doom is more desperate and overshadowing. It plunges to the depths of anguish and torment in “Gravis”. The background is rich, put together sparingly through roaring feedback and faraway guitar injections. The pacing further helps here, taking a slithering form as if crawling toward some ill-fated attempt at redemption. The atmosphere is further enhanced through the clean chants in the second half of “Gravis”, again using minimal means to produce a towering presence.
This mentality washes over “Factum”, a strange interlude that alludes to a deserted landscape, a desolate limbo state that slowly fades into nothingness. While Submersus features all the good qualities of Hell, even diving into the blackened outbursts, it does not reach the same heights as their 2017 release. This is a more straightforward work, closer to their I to III era, and while that is not by any means a bad thing, the expansive scope of Hell is missing.
Submersus may not scale to the suffocating majesty of their 2017 record, but its stripped-down focus evokes the agony of descent with devastating clarity. Blast it loud as you enter its torture chamber with a smile on your face. – Spyros Stasis
Incinerated – The Epitome of Transgression (BlackSeed)
Incinerated’s journey from their debut, Stellar Abomination, to their sophomore, The Epitome of Transgression, is one of maturity. From bestial chaos to conceptual depth, the Indonesian act refine their black/death edge, shifting away from its chaotic, war-infused origins and into a more profound, more introspective hatred. “Preludium: The Saint’s Humanity” establishes this turn towards the grand and expansive while signaling an imperial ambition. This transformation fully blossoms on “Deciphering the Signs of Salvation”, where stylistic weaving enriches the band’s black/death foundation.
Incinerated reach for many different flavours, with the start of “Deciphering the Signs of Salvation” leaning toward the dissonant black metal edge, echoing with a Deathspell Omega influence. This soon shifts as they return to Dissection’s devilish melodic hooks. It is a bold twist, difficult to pull off, yet within the 12-minute opener’s flow, Incinerated coalesce these two worlds. They then go further.
They venture deeper into altered states on “The Cyclic Perdition”, where pseudo-psychedelic structures loop endlessly, collapsing linear time. This hallucinatory space mutates into industrial ritualism on “Confronting & Unfolding Fana”, evoking the scorched soundscapes of Mz. 412 and Funerary Call. Then, they return to their origin, their polemic black/death having its day with the beginning of “Traces of Eternity” before morphing into Incinerated’s current form. It is an apt finale, not just rehashing their past, but transfiguring into something more enduring, originally forged in fire and now cooled with perspective. – Spyros Stasis
Kontusion – Insatiable Lust for Death (Profound Lore)
Mark Bronzino (Coffin Dust, ex-Mammoth Grinder, ex-Iron Reagan) and Chris Moore (Repulsion) unite over a shared obsession: the violent, rotten, and punk-infested core of old-school death metal. Enter Kontusion, whose debut full-length, Insatiable Lust for Death, strips the genre to its rawest impulses and revels in the filth. As expected, Bronzino and Moore reconnect with the genre’s brutal roots. Repulsion’s DNA drives much of the momentum, from blast-driven panic to mid-paced stampedes, as heard on “Melting” and “Horrid Eye” (which somewhat resembles “Horrified”).
While enticing, much of the OSDM resurgence focuses on brutality, but without digging deeper into the primal core. Not Kontusion. There is a caveman mentality that defines Insatiable Lust for Death, and it stems from the feeling. The relentless picking and pummelling rhythms define “Revenge”, turning its monolithic progression into a stampede. The punk stench helps here, adding an awkwardness to “Endless Horror” and “No Escape” and providing purpose and drive to “Throne of Skulls”.
This approach adds just the right kind of darkness to Kontusion’s OSDM brew, pairing with cavernous vocal reverb to summon a truly alienating space. It resurrects Terrorizer’s violent momentum and the sledgehammer grind of mid-era Napalm Death. It aches with the early Entombed and Nihilist spirit, especially with the groove in “Hemorrhage” and the torturous approach in “Subjugation”.
In short, Kontusion are true traditionalists. They do not look to make adjustments to their OSDM inspiration. It is a brutally honest approach, and it shows with Insatiable Lust for Death. Plenty of bands dabble in OSDM’s aesthetics, but few channel its spirit with this much intent. Kontusion don’t reinvent the wheel; they crush it underfoot, caveman-style. – Spyros Stasis
Phantom Spell – Heather & Hearth (Wizard Tower)
Without much contest, the title of the month’s most enchanting album goes to Heather & Hearth. Taking a break from his main band Seven Sisters, who released the excellent Shadow of a Fallen Star Pt.2 back in March, guitarist and vocalist Kyle McNeill ventures into the mystical lands of Phantom Spell, once again finding ways to absorb New Wave of British Heavy Metal’s heaviness and lush harmonies into the baroque world of 1970s progressive rock—or the other way around.
Meandering through “heartfelt tales” with stunning riffs, galloping rhythms, and lovely synthesizer and keyboards leads, the music alternately evokes the rich neoclassical progressive rock of Yes and Jon Anderson’s latter collaborations (see Invention of Knowledge with Roine Stolt), Iron Maiden’s heavy harmonies, King Crimson’s avant tendencies, the crunchiness of Manilla Road, the retro-futuristic visions of Ayreon, and even the jazz rock era of Return to Forever (circa Romantic Warrior).
Simply put, this is glorious and transporting music, built on top of nostalgic genres, yes, but supported by a quite modern sensibility for writing songs intricate in structure yet sublime in mood. – Antonio Poscic
Sigh – I Saw the World’s End – Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV (Peaceville)
Helmed by Mirai Kawashima, Japan’s Sigh have built a history of idiosyncratic releases and course changes that often threw off both their listeners and labels. Even one of the group’s most beloved albums, 2007’s Hangman’s Hymn – Musikalische Exequien, arrived after a hasty course correction, shifting several gears at once by swooping from the moody and synth-laden progressively dark metal of Gallows Gallery into blistering symphonic black metal. While the need for remasters and re-recordings of their material is questionable—Gallows Gallery’s original release was charmingly lo-fi—this new version of Hangman’s Hymn diverges enough from the original to warrant attention.
While the material has remained largely untouched—and with good reason, it’s thrilling!—Kawashima’s new incarnation of Sigh interprets it with ultimate gusto. Helped by the clear yet bombastic production, the 2007 album finds new life here, with screaming riffs scintillating around a more varied vocal delivery and black metal attacks that somehow manage to be both more melodic and intensely chaotic, like on the Imperial Triumphant-go-to-the-circus atmosphere of “Inked In Blood” or the apocalyptic “Death With Dishonor”. – Antonio Poscic
Venus Star – Smokeless Fires (Terratur Possessions)
Atvar’s musical output stretches across the black metal spectrum, from the post-punk infusions of Circle of Ouroborus to the occult repetitions of Kêres and the raw minimalism of Elemental. With Venus Star, Atvar descends into the doom depths, injecting the black metal core with a slow, deliberate progression.
His latest record, Smokeless Fires, further embraces the Finnish tradition of groove-infected repetition via psychedelic means. Celtic Frost form the basis, the awkward but grand progression cutting through “Lesson”, with the slithering changes to the main riff oozing with first-wave black metal deviance. Aitvar digs deeper, “Pebble” awakening the Hellhammer primal instinct, once again incorporating discordant deviations to the guitar lead to destabilize the groove.
Still, the majority of Smokeless Fires draws from local surroundings. “Spasm” immediately recalls Ride For Revenge and their decadent groove-laden stampedes. It increases the grit and dirt in “Remember”, a sludge essence forming before the blackened clouds rise in “Fate”. Here, it is Barathrum’s legacy driving the effort. It’s psychedelia through repetition and circular motif, a bad trip, especially on “Formation”, where the roaring feedback drowns all rhythmic anchor points.
It can reach despairing depths that recall Swallowed’s grandeur and venomous intent in “No Prism”. For a singular moment in “Light”, there is a flicker of hope, a few graceful lines cutting through the darkness, but it is only fleeting. This is where Venus Star’s brilliance lies. In projecting a glimmer, only to then take it away. Instead, Atvar finds meaning in the repetition, solace in the unchanging motifs that project movement. On the surface, it might appear singular, but Smokeless Fires holds the same deep reservoir of intent as Atvar’s other work. Another deviation, yes, but also another milestone in an ever-expanding black metal continuum. – Spyros Stasis
Vésperal – La Mort de l’Âme (Independent)
The richness of the Québecois black metal scene cannot be overstated, with its range encompassing everything from raw, punk-infused energy to depressive, highly melodic sorrow. It is in the latter part where Vésperal fit, with their 2023 debut, Nuits blanches, acting as an introduction. Its conjunction of DSBM with a latent punk heritage is uncanny, and its continuation with La Mort de l’âme exposes more of the band’s vision.
La Mort de l’âme begins by exposing the beauty within darkness. The acoustic guitar passages are striking at the start of “La Perte de Soi”, invoking a folk-leaning heritage within the scene. Similarly, the well-placed synthesizers build a strong ambiance in “Brouillard Fantômatique”, and its slow pace and weaving melodies conjure a strange, dark magic. This dark magic takes a near-cinematic scope in the vast melodies of “Cruel Silence”.
Yet beneath this façade lurks a nastier beast. It reveals itself in destructive, erratic black metal assaults reminiscent of Akitsa’s triumphant blasts (“La Corde d’un Pendu”). Channeling this ferocity through a punk ethos, Vésperal summon stamping grooves on “Nos Délires d’Autrefois”, without losing emotional potency. What is striking is how Vésperal can preserve this magic and wonder through the heavier parts, moving closer to the sound of Sombres Forêts and Miserere Luminis.
They also similarly expose hooks, combining their DSBM motifs with a rocking tone and punk vibe, without losing any of their emotive presence (“Souffle Glacial”). This ability to balance atmospheric depth with raw immediacy is what makes La Mort de l’âme so compelling. It confirms Vésperal as one of the most promising voices in Québec’s black metal underground. – Spyros Stasis
Warkings – Armageddon (Napalm)
When you’re dealing with a power metal band named Warkings, you can be sure of two things. One, their themes will be about, well, war, but also various notable historical events—a choice in no small measure influenced by their singer Georg Neuheuser (alias the Tribune) being a historian by profession. Two, they’ll cosplay the hell out of it all. Putting aside the band’s comically over-the-top appearance, which includes performing live in full warrior costumes, mashups of Roman, Viking, and Teutonic armor, we’re left with seriously good music.
While rooted in the Sabaton and HammerFall tradition of European power metal, with flashes of Kamelot and Powerwolf mixed in for good measure, the music possesses a distinct edge and attack that helps Armageddon escape the trappings of generic-sounding genre followers. Add to all that the fact that Secil Sen (alias Morgana le Fay) is now a full-time member of the band, with her silky but ragged roar offering a pleasing counterpoint to Neuheuser’s high register lines. You get one of Warkings’ most well-rounded albums to date and one of the best power metal albums of the year so far. – Antonio Poscic
Wytch Hazel – V: Lamentations (Bad Omen)
In contrast to Phantom Spell’s progressive rock tendencies and refreshing fusion of styles (see elsewhere in this column), Wytch Hazel stick closer to a purely nostalgic and authentic vision of 1970s hard rock and (British) heavy metal. In this case, that’s not a bad thing at all. While their music unequivocally evokes Thin Lizzy, UFO, Blue Öyster Cult, and their ilk, the Lancaster, England quartet never sound like a cover band, sound derivative, or dive too deep into homage.
Instead, like time travellers propelled forward half a century, they craft new things in a vintage style, with plenty of gorgeously melodic vocal lines, guitar harmonies, and vibrant hooks to go around. Compared to previous records, V: Lamentations finds Wytch Hazel at the mellowest and most relaxed point of their career. Considering the dark clouds that have covered the Earth, perhaps this bit of anachronism and whiff of (Christian-flavored) flower power is just what we need. – Antonio Poscic