SONIC SELECTIONS O))): 10 Essential albums released in May, 2025

Artist: low before the breeze
Album: “A whole beneath the home we shared”
Release date: May, 30th 2025

genre: blackened hardcore, chaotic hardcore, sludge, post hardcore

Artist: Rivers of Nihil
Album: “Rivers of Nihil”
Release date: May, 30th 2025

genre: progressive death metal

Artist: Obstruktion
Album: "The End Takes Form"
Release date: May, 30th 2025

genre: death metal, hardcore

Artist: Vildhjarta
Album: “där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar”

Release date: May, 30th 2025

genre: thall, djent

Artist: Coldsblood
Album: "Obscured into Nebulous Dusk"
Release date: May, 30th 2025

genre: black metal, funeral doom, death doom

Artist: Unmerciful
Album: “Devouring Darkness”
Release date: May, 22nd 2025

genre: brutal death metal

Artist: …And Oceans
Album: The Regeneration Itinerary
Release date: May, 23rd

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genre: symphonic black metal, death metal

Artist: Graverealm
Album: "Betrayer"
Release date: May, 23rd 2025

genre: brutal death metal, technical death metal

Artist: Lastima
Album: “A Pain Bloomed from my Lungs”
Release date: May, 16th 2025

genre: black metal, screamo, post hardcore

Artist: Telos
Album: “what they built”
Release date: May, 9th 2025

genre: blackened hardcore, mathcore, chaotic hardcore, screamo

ALBUM REVIEW: Will Haven, "Muerte"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 23/03/2018

Label: Minus Head Records

 “Muerte” is a glorious affirmation of Will Haven's greatness and raises the bar for heavy music in 2018, an awesome awe inspiring achievement for a band 23 years into their existence.

“Muerte” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Hewed With the Brand
2. Winds of Change
3. Kinney
4. The Son
5. 43
6. No Escape (feat. Mike Scheidt of YOB)
7. Unit K
8. Ladwig No. 949
9. Bootstraps
10. Now in the Ashes
11. El Sol (feat. Stephen Carpenter)

The Review:

Hopes of heavy veterans returning with an album that rivals their finest early work are rarely realised. Sacramento hellraisers Will Haven gave a timely reminder of their potent racket on 2011 LP “Voir Dire”. After a lengthy break the band now return with the awe-inspiring “Muerte”, a massive record that gives “Carpe Diem” a run for its money as their finest hour.

The quiet ambience of “Hewed With The Brand” is soon shattered by Grady Avenell’s glass gargling bark which heralds an earth-shaking explosion of riffage. Straight away the band lock into their trademark staccato assault, sounding bigger, heavier and uglier than ever before. The material here strikes a perfect balance between maintaining Will Haven’s crushing sonic palette while adding new layers of songwriting complexity. Will Haven have always had a penchant for hypnotic, effects-heavy interludes of calm in amongst the mayhem but now these sections have been incorporated into more challenging, dynamic compositions like “The Son” and “Now In The Ashes”. Key to this epic, immersive sound is the more prominent use of keyboards. When they were first introduced on “Voir Dire” they added a welcome subtle texture to the bands rumbling sludge. Now they have evolved into an all-encompassing wash of ethereal noise that lends these tracks a rich, unique atmosphere.  

“No Escape” provides a powerful centrepiece to the album bolstered by a stunning guest vocal performance by YOB’s Mike Scheidt. A typically brutal lumbering explodes into a slow-motion lament with Scheidt’s timeless croon really hammering home the emotion. The melancholic doom of the outro is strangely beautiful with wordless howls conveying an aching sadness.

Deftones’ Stephen Carpenter joins the fray for the massive finale of “El Sol”. This track is a perfect celebration of the friendship between these two hugely influential bands and demonstration of what both are capable of at the peak of their powers.

The possibility of Will Haven delivering one of the albums of 2018 seemed minimal at the start of the year. “Muerte” is a glorious affirmation of their greatness and raises the bar for heavy music in 2018, an awesome achievement for a band 23 years into their existence.

“Muerte” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Yurodivy - "Aphos"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 02/02/2017

Label: Itawak Records

Strasbourg’s Yurodivy have created an intriguing debut album in the form of “Aphos”, an epic suite of furious chaotic hardcore with dark melodic undertones. Yurodivy take some familiar sounds and meld them into enthralling new forms on “Aphos”. It is a captivating debut statement brimming with potential for future releases.

“Aphos” DD//LP track listing:

A1 - Six Feet Under Water

A2 - The Way Of The Light

A3 - Ascension

A4 - 40 Days

A5 - Now You Can Feed The Monster Part I

B1 - Now You Can Feed The Monster Part II

B2 - Children Of The Sun

B3 - In The Violence Of The Ashes

B4 - War Drums

B5 - Necessary

B6 - Genesis 1.6

The Review:

Strasbourg’s Yurodivy have created an intriguing debut album in the form of “Aphos”, an epic suite of furious chaotic hardcore with dark melodic undertones.

The opening trio of “Six Feet Under Water”, “The Way Of The Light” and “Ascension” provide an exhilarating start; schizophrenic blasts of raging punk rock, angular Botch style riffage and ominous spacious doom chords. The band negotiate the changes in style with fluid ease resulting in taut tracks of tension and release.

The next two tracks see an abrupt shift into tone that works to great effect. “40 Days” is an absorbing nine minute monster that moves between periods of ominous calm and clanging full-band heaviness. The vocals during the quiet sections are particularly eerie, a spooked, distant muttering riddled with desperation. A menacing piano and feedback laden drone consumes the din and casts a hypnotic spell that is soon shattered by the crushing finale.

  

“Now You Can Feed The Monster Parts 1 & 2” continues this mood, beginning with hushed picked guitars that recall the powerful screamo grandeur of City of Caterpillar. The track slowly builds in intensity and eventually gives way to a barrage of off-kilter riffage. This acts as the perfect lead-in to the face-melting triple threat of “Children Of The Sun”, “In The Violence Of The Ashes” and “War Drums”. These three short bursts see Yurodivy throw away all restraint to unleash feral doses of raging blast-beat riddled mayhem.

The final act of “Necessary” and “Genesis” find Yurodivy taking a slightly calmer approach to end the record. The former is a restrained effects-laden piece that brings the previously hinted at At The Drive-In and Mars Volta influences to the fore, particularly on the vocal front. “Genesis” continues the work established by “Necessary” and reintroduces some of the earlier harshness to bring all of the threads of the album together in satisfactory fashion.

Yurodivy take some familiar sounds and meld them into enthralling new forms on “Aphos”. It is a captivating debut statement brimming with potential for future releases.

“Aphos” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Ohhms - "The Fool"

By: Stephen Murray

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 31/03/2017

Label: Holy Roar Records

“The Fool” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Shuffle, Cut and Reveal

2). The Magician

3). The Hanged Man

4). The World

5). The Lovers

6). The Hierophant

The Review:

This is not doom. Even less is it sludge. The influence of those genres can be felt, but to understand Ohhms under those terms is misleading.

Three years on since Ohhms' first appearance outside the rehearsal room, it is still unclear who first applied these labels to the band, though there's no doubt that these are labels the group have done nothing to eschew. Speaking outside Camden's Black Heart in 2014 before their second ever gig, the deal with Holy Roar not yet in the bag, vocalist Paul had admitted as much. "To be quite honest I would be happy to be lumped in with the doom thing just because it's different and there [are] elements of doom in [our music]," he had said. And yet, out of the then 30 minute set they had, only eight minutes were described by Paul as doom. He'd timed it. So what are they? "Classic rock, if anything," he'd said then.

'The Fool' is the band's third release and the first that they consider to be a full-length, and the description 'classic rock' still sounds fairer than what is more usually thrown at them. There are definite hints of Pink Floyd’s more reflective moments, along with some guitar work that would not upset the 80s hard rock applecart. Though there is more going on here, and not just Dan working his way through his extensive pedal board of boutique guitar effects, or indeed anything particularly progladytic. Where Ohhms skirt the sludgey-doomy influence, it is filtered through post-something-or-other and is akin to grunge.

There they are in good company; though rather different, Germany’s Aleph Null also came in on a stoner tip but sound like the debt is actually made out in the name of grunge and psych rock, and that is no bad thing. To anyone who has been following Ohhms these last few years, this record will feel a very natural and subtle mutation. Paul still has his self-professed “singy and shouty, never screamy” vocals pushed through echo. Not psych rock meltiness, but a big room-feel. Chainy’s restless and nomadic bass still wanders widely in search of home. Max still offers a lyrical range of punctuation and backbone, though has stepped it up on the faster moments in “The Fool”. But despite the ready familiarity of the sound, the word that fell from my lips as the first listen came to a close was “surprising.”

One of the most striking things about this album is not the penultimate track, 'The Lovers,' (which, on first hearing, you would be forgiven for thinking a song penned by Phil Collins for a Disney soundtrack had somehow snuck its way in -- that may read as though it is intended to be a slur. It isn't.) Rather, it is most striking for its echoes of the band four fifths of Ohhms emerged from: The Babies Three.

Before taking on this review I had decided not to wake the dead; to allow Ohhms to be judged independently of that past. But not only do some of the guitar lines seem to recall that heritage, but the lyrics to the album’s closer, ‘The Hierophant,’ are lifted wholesale from File Under Retaliation’s ‘Rotten Apples’. As the lyric says: “Recurring themes throughout my life.”

The original mission statement may have been Swans circa “1984”, but it was never quite to be. Instead there’s something more organic. Ohhms shoot new blooms from deep roots, laying out their generational history as they evolve as musicians.

“The Fool” is available here

 Band info: bandcamp || facebook

REVIEW: Oak - “Your Mess As Much As Mine” (EP)

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 28/01/2017

Label: Truthseeker Music

The band deliver a breathless mix of Converge at their most knotty, mixed with a distinctly European brand of screamo/chaotic hardcore that hits hard. These tracks are really brought to life by some frantic, complex drum work that channels the spirit of Ben Koller.  “Your Mess As Much As Mine” is a brief but brilliant release from Oak that shows the band are more than capable of holding their own against the heavyweights of the genre.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine” DD//LP track listing:

1). Broken Bodied

2). Garden

3). For Better or Worse

4). Elsewhere

5). Family and Friends

The Review:

Oak’s new EP “Your Mess As Much As Mine” may only be seventeen minutes long but it makes a strong impact over its short duration.

The Gothenburg trio come out of traps hard with the fierce opening trio of “Broken Bodied”, “Garden” and “For Better or Worse”. The band deliver a breathless mix of Converge at their most knotty, mixed with a distinctly European brand of screamo/chaotic hardcore that hits hard. These tracks are really brought to life by some frantic, complex drum work that channels the spirit of Ben Koller.

“Elsewhere” sees the band ease up on the gas while maintaining high levels of spite. It’s a slower track that sees Oak introduce elements of noise rock and culminates in a crushing doom riff that is eventually overpowered by a rising tide of raw noise. “Family and Friends” provides a fitting end to the EP, five minutes of intensity that brings together the different elements explored over the previous tracks for a raucous finale.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine” is a brief but brilliant release from Oak that shows the band are more than capable of holding their own against the heavyweights of the genre.

“Your Mess As Much As Mine” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

Cranial - "Dead Ends" EP (Review)

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 02/09/2015

Label: Moment of Collapse

Cranial forge epic journeys that marry the weighty post metal of early Pelican to the hefty crunch of Mastodon’s “Remission” with captivating results. Bursts of soaring post-rock are employed to provide contrast to the onslaught of chugging armageddon. “Dead Ends” ably demonstrates why Cranial is the perfect name for this band. This is brainy music - intelligently constructed yet skull-crushingly heavy.

“Dead End” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Nightbringer

2). Limes

The Review

Würzberg quartet, Cranial have risen from the ashes of instrumental heavyweights Omega Massif. Anyone who misses that band will find ample solace in “Dead Ends”.

Here are only two tracks to savour on this impressive debut release but these lengthy compositions pack in more twists and turns than most LPs. Cranial forge epic journeys that marry the weighty post metal of early Pelican to the hefty crunch of Mastodon’s “Remission” with captivating results. The band navigate shifts in tempo and volume with ease and manage to avoid the pitfalls of obvious build and release dynamics. Bursts of soaring post-rock are employed to provide contrast to the onslaught of chugging armageddon. The delayed lead guitar rising from the smoking pit of distortion in the middle of “Nightbringer” heightens the emotional impact without feeling cheesy or unnecessary.

Cranial mostly let the riffs do the talking but sparingly deploy vocals to powerful effect. Huge reverb-drenched roars occasionally emerge from the wall of noise to heighten the drama, lending an air of black metal to proceedings. This is particularly effective during the cacophonous climax of “Limes”.as the heavily effected vocals blur the boundary between voice and instruments.

“Dead Ends” ably demonstrates why Cranial is the perfect name for this band. This is brainy music - intelligently constructed yet skull-crushingly heavy.

“Dead Ends” is available here

Band info: facebook

Throwers - "Loss" (Album Review)

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 15/01/2016

Label: Golden Antenna

The highlights of the album come when the band is at their most focused and aggressive. Frenetic parting shot "Nevermore" is the best example of this, a breathless track of furious drumming and relentless, ugly riffs which brings to mind Manchester's much-missed Hammers.  Tracks like "Karg" and "Homecoming" sound like early Mastodon tussling with Cult of Luna in a sweaty basement - hardcore grit and metallic crunch combine with electrifying results

“Loss” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Singularity
2. Der Makel
3. Karg
4. Homecoming
5. Unarmed
6. Assigning
7. Nevermore

The Review:

Leipzig quartet Throwers are the latest in a series of awesome bands who have crafted a characteristic German, metallic D.I.Y sound. Following the likes of Trainwreck, Planks and Lentic Waters, the band deliver a lethal concoction of chaotic screamo, crusty punk, dark riffs and post metal flourishes. "Loss" is their debut full-length consisting of seven tracks of searing fury, continuing the fine tradition of their forebearers.

The highlights of the album come when the band is at their most focused and aggressive. Frenetic parting shot "Nevermore" is the best example of this, a breathless track of furious drumming and relentless, ugly riffs which brings to mind Manchester's much-missed Hammers.

Throwers distinguish themselves from their peers by upping the stakes in terms of heavy riffs and epic atmosphere. Tracks like "Karg" and "Homecoming" sound like early Mastodon tussling with Cult of Luna in a sweaty basement - hardcore grit and metallic crunch combine with electrifying results. The band even throw in some spidery off-kilter, riff-mangling in "Unarmed", hinting at a penchant for mathematical complexity. It would be great to see them explore this further on future releases.

"Loss" is a strong statement of intent from Throwers, a short, sharp burst of intensity that's sure to enrapture many in 2016.

“Loss” is available here

Band info: bandcamp | facebook

Black Sheep Wall - I'm Going to Kill Myself (Album Review)

Albym Type: Full-Length

Date Released: 26/1/2015

Label: Season of Mist

‘I’m Going to Kill Myself’ CD/DD track listing:

1.    The Wailing and the Gnashing and the Teeth
2.    Tetsuo: The Dead Man
3.    White Pig
4.    Metallica

Black Sheep Wall is

Brandon Gillichbauer | vocals, bass
Scott Turner | guitar, bass
Andrew Hulle | guitar
Jackson Thompson | drums

Review:

Sometimes a band comes along that challenges everything you know or thought you knew about heavy music, Californian doom merchants Black Sheep Wall are one such band and the fantastically titled "I'm Going To Kill Myself", the bands third offering, is an entirely rare and unique listening experience.

Things get off to an intense start with "The Wailing and The Gnashing and The Teeth". A grim marching snare drum underpinned by an unsettling clean guitar all of which are accompanied by a vocal filled with agony and rage. It's a 9 minute opener that's as bleak as it is beautiful. "Tetsuo The Dead Man" charges open with a crushing riff and an ear bashing screech that just adds to the discomfort you'll already be experiencing. It's a twisting, formless monster that's impossible to keep track of. The band is taking you further and further down the rabbit hole and it's exhilarating. The decent into the abyss rumbles on with "White Pig". Another rhythmically challenging piece of doom artistry, it's remarkable how the band are able to create such a sense of confusion and madness, it's as though you're trapped in a nightmare state and they'll lead you out when they're good and ready. It delves into sheer brutal dissonance before regaining control with some otherworldly chanting. If you've made it this far, you're about to experience the albums finest moment. A true test even for the most hardened doom fan, the 33 minute closer "Metallica". A sprawling, disjointed, terrifying challenge. It's a track that you the listener have to earn and I can assure you, it's worth it. It begins with a riff that's so relentless it's almost hypnotic. The only thing that keeps you from falling into trance is the nails-on-a-chalkboard vocals. It's difficult to put into words how you'll feel when it's all over but you'll need a rest.

"I'm Going To Kill Myself" is an avant-garde doom masterpiece. It's a truly uncomfortable and unnerving experience (thanks in part to the artwork) that will leave a permanent mark on your psyche. In an era when doom and sludge is on the rise and the 20 minute plus song structures are as popular as ever, it's refreshing to see a current band utilise the formula to truly devastating effect. If you're up to the task, put this on and prepare to be consumed.

Words by: Rhys Miles

You can pick up a copy here

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