cassette craze chronicles XLIII feat. DISEMBODIMENT, ESCARNIUM, INCONSOLABLE GHOST, SANCTUARIUM and SUBMARINE ON MARS

That came fast, right? Well, I told you last time that I already had enough new tapes for another edition, didn't I? So let's go!

DISEMBODIMENT - Spiral Crypts (2025)

Let's begin with Everlasting Spew Records, who are quiet good at designing attractive cassette packages with lyrics (very small though) and all. Life hack: take a picture with your phone and read along that way!

Lyrically you'll see what you probably already suspected from the cover artwork of Disembodiment's mini album: It's all about infestation, mutation, rotting, body horror and shit, just what the music demands. And the music of the Canadian quartet is gnarly Old School Death Metal with riffs rooted both in the primitivism of classic Obituary and the swirling insanity of Morbid Angel's "Altars of Madness". Every now and then it also leaves breaks for some sick and slow, even doomy delights.

There's no double bottom, no secret or special sauce to "Spiral Crypts" - and it isn't needed. Sometimes you just need high quality gruesome fun in your Death Metal. Love it!

ESCARNIUM - Inexorable Entropy (2025)

Equally satisfying is the layout of this other Everlasting Spew release by Brazilian Death Metal horde Escarnium.

"Inexorable Entropy" also flies by with just an half-hour playing time, yet musically this assault feels bigger. A cavernous, yet brutal and not too blurred production, a wider stylistic approach, More atmosphere and epic grandiosity, yet also deadlier riffs with more sinister disharmony.

An awesome, ferociously performed Death Metal rubdown, rich in variety, but never losing its focus. Banger!

SANCTUARIUM - Melted and Decomposed (2025)

All sick things come in threes. So fuck yes, here's even more Death Metal! And this time it's a longer album (around fifty minutes) - and for a change the production actually feels really muffled and low-fi. The latter actually is a feature however, since after a short phase of adjustment you realize that it's the most consequent choice for the putrid aural abyss the Spaniards Sanctuarium are unleashing on this creeping, crawling, blustering and gurgling gory Doom Death monstrosity.

Sanctuarium live in Berlin

I bought the tape right after their brilliantly intense show at Morbid Catacombs Fest and it's a perfect reminder of that excellently poisonous experience.

"Abhorrent Excruciation In Reprisal", "Exultant Dredge of Nameless Tombs", "Phlegmatic Convolsions", "Sadistic Cremation of Emaciated Offal", "The Disembodied Grip of Putrecine Stench"... the hilariously exaggerated song titles say it all in the best possible way.

Rancid Death for the relaxing visit to the tomb within.*

INCONSOLABLE GHOST - Sokołowsko Channelling (2018)

One day before my memorable encounter with Sanctuarium I had already witnessed the comeback show of The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, from which I also brought a tape back home.

Inconsolable Ghost is another project of some of the band members and "Sokolowsko Channeling" is the live recording of a 2018 show in Poland, consisting of an hour-long Dark Ambient improvisation (divided into two parts for the tape), in which multiple layers of electronic noises merge with guitar, viola and trumpet.

It's actually quite close to what The Mount Fuji Doomjatt Corporation is doing, just a little more abstract and without a bass guitar leading through it.

A very intriguing,  dynamic wave of sounds. The digital version gives you a quarter-hour bonus from another performance with "Kraków Channeling".

SUBMARINE ON MARS - Mission One: Fuzz Infused Space Rock (2024)

Finally another merch purchase, this time from the Pink Tank Open Air in September.

Submarine On Mars live in Osterrönfeld

The German trio Submarine On Mars makes it almost a little bit too easy to write a short review like this, because they conveniently include the style description in the title. Fact-checking the three tracks of their debut EP I must confirm the music on this tape can be indeed rightfully be labeled as "Fuzz Infused Space Rock".

Yet while I'm enjoying their cool Psychedelic sound I'm wondering if they will continue naming their releases this way - and if yes, what the next mission will be. Not gonna lie, the biggest boss move for "Mission Two" would be a King Gizzard style jump to something completely different. Americana-Infused Showgaze? Dub-dripping Slowcore? Disco Drone Electro-Funk? Whatever, Bring it on!

But don't worry! If you "only" have more Stoner Kraut jams like these in your pipeline for now, that's ok, too... I guess.

* because I couldn't finish this with at least one Autopsy reference

cassette craze chronicles XLII feat. MAUD THE MOTH, SOLAR CORONA ELEKTRISCHE MASCHINE, TAVARE, THE MOND and THISQUIETARMY x OTAY:ONII

Ok, since I already have enough new tapes for the next epsidode this post is overdue as fuck. So let's not waste time and press PLAY!

MAUD THE MOTH - The Distaff (2025)

This is not a transparent vinyl edition. I had actually ordered that one, together with Messa's "The Spin". Yet somehow my retailer kept putting me off from month to month, even though both limited editions were already on the market. So at some point I canceled that order and rather got the albums in other formats. And I must say that the Woodford Halse tape version of Maud The Moth's "The Distaff" was a great choice, since it surely must be the loveliest edition of the release, with a slipcase, a cut-out J-card and the possibilty to put in an alternatiove cover artwork. A very nice item!

And musically? While Amaya López-Carromero remains the sole songwriter of her project, and her piano work and ethereal or operatic vocals are still the main attraction on her new album, it features a lot of guitar by her Healthyliving bandmate Scott McLean (who also contributes Moog synths and saxophone) and drums, which often make it feel like a "real" band effort.
On top of that it can of course never be wrong to also have Alison Chesley aka Helen Money on cello on your recording.

"The Distaff" is an impressive journey through dynamics and emotions. From the small and brittle to the surprisingly crushing and cathartic it's an amazingly beautiful achievement. And it does it all in complete defiance of genre conventions. Neoclassical, Doom, Ethereal Wave, Singer-Songwriter, Experimental Folk, Post Rock... the tag list on the album's Bandcamp page goes on and on - and nothing is wrong there, while it still feels as if this is made of a dozen more stylistic influences.

Maud The Moth doesn't try to outdo the the hooks and earworm qualities of Healthyliving's 2023 debut, yet instead impresses with touching heavenly heights and profound spiritual depths. Mesmerizing art.

THISQUIETARMY x OTAY:ONII - Howl And Tell (2025)

Speaking of captivating female singers there's no way around the spellbinding magic of Lane Shi Otay:onii, who seems to be everywhere right now - yet still I keep missing my chances to see her live in Hamburg due to clashes with other shows...

For this album the Chinese-American artist spontanously teamed up with Canadian Drone guitar master Eric Quach aka Thisquietarmy. So this is just the two of them - guitar and effects on one side, vocals, keytar and kazoo on the other interacting with each other. A duet and dialogue here, a harmonious or deliberately cacaphonous merging there. Whatever happens, the artistic chemistry is always palpable.

At the latest once you reach the feral despair of the album's midpoint in "Limps Dragging Towards Saturn Slowly", there's no denying that this a meeting of exceptional experimental artists, who know how to make your bones rumble and your soul shake. A logical sequel to Hypnodrone Ensemble's "The Problem Is In The Sender - Do Not Tamper With The Receiver", where they met before, yet a much closer and more dangerous experience. Amazing waves of emotional Noise!

The cassette design is solid, I especially like the full print on the shell itself.

TAVARE- Too Small To Be So High (2025)

Smooth transition to another core member of the Hypnodrone Ensemble with Aidan Baker's trio Tavare featuring him on guitar, Tristen Bakker on bass and Angela Muñoz (who's also part of the Ensemble) on drums.

Their music is quite quiet, a minimalist semi-acoustic form of slow-motion Alternative and Post Rock, very song-driven with all members singing. It is stripped down, but ambitious enough to still intrigue you. Atmospherically this actually reminds me a lot of good old SubRosa, but Tavare have their own very distinct vibe, providing an excellent soundtrack for winding down with songs that keep getting stronger with each listen.

Could this be one of my favorite Aidan Baker projects? Possibly. But he has so many, right? Well, who cares? Especially the natural, imperfect but just right feeling and tasteful harmony vocals on "Too Small To Be So High" are just balm for the soul.

And the interestingly structured "Left Behind" alone makes me happy that I got this cassette, which comes in an all-cardboard packaging, from Cruel Nature Records. A cool, lovely release.

SOLAR CORONA ELEKTRISCHE MASCHINE - Live At Cafe Oto (2024)

And now we're getting really trippy with a live release from last year, featuring a live performance from 2023, when the Portuguese Improvisational Stoner Rock band Solar Corona played an especially cosmic, hypnotic, infinitely improvised and above all very electronics-based show in London - hence the "Electric Machine" extension of the band name.

In two long Kraut jams with robust robotik backbones sounds are pulsating, oscillating, creaking, wafting and drifting through the cosmos like an android's mind discovering its soul and consciousness and the beauty of the stars in existential wonder.

The hand-numbered tape comes in an interestingly designed, layered combination of one transparent, one shiny silver J-card and prints on the cassette tray. A good visual fit for this great Experimental Psychedelic music. Awesome stuff!

THE MOND - 3 修正ニュートン力学 (2019)

My introduction to the Czech trio The Mond and their self-titled 2016 album hasn't been long ago. I actually featured it in the previous edition of the cassette craze chronicles.

Three years later their combination of Electronics, trumpet / bass clarinet, synths, organ and electric guitar still creates a distinct range of sounds. And while this is still home at the crossing of Experimental Free Jazz and Psychedelic Noise the performances on "3 修正ニュートン力学" (which unsurprisingly I cannot pronounce) actually feel less bonkers and more focussed here. Still way too crazy for the average consumer, but that's a basic prerequisite of everything Avantgarde, right?

The kind of weirdness that makes me happy, with a nice artwork that doesn't hurt either.

cassette craze chronicles XLI feat. CH'AHOM, DÉLIRANT, DIRK SERRIES, GORGONIS, HAGER/KAPUTT, MIIRA, NEVER SOL, THE MOND and URN

Phew, they keep piling up! Time to spin some tapes again!

DIRK SERRIES - Fog Curtains (2025)

Let's start with the elephant in the room, the one which obviously sticks out in the picture above! Released by Momentarily Records, a label specialized on small cassette releases in special packaging, Dirk Serries' latest(ish?) solo album comes as an unexpected haptic experience in a grey block of concrete.
There's something oddly satisfying about this inconvenient housing which you cannot even fully close. Just holding this solid thing in your hand, feeling its surface - and also being glad that this is not the standard for all tapes.

The music fits the grey colour and just like the concrete surface is a rather textural experience, in which maybe three or four layers of sound keep meandering around each other, just like... uhm... "Fog Curtains". Droning, whooshing, resonating, this is a pure sound experience, the core of Ambient guitar music.

The Bandcamp description actually almost says it all:
"The four songs on the album are a beautiful and captivating journey through a misty landscape. The artwork consists of a self-cast concrete shell and a colourful credit inlay, which perfectly matches the slightly hazy colour of the tape."

One might only add that you probably won't even notice that these forty minutes are divided into four parts, because all changes are very subtle, the principle of organic formlessness never changes. "Fog Curtains" certainly requieres attention and deep listening - yet the album rewards you with a freeing and relaxing sensation not meant to be put into words.

GORGONIS - Choice Paralysis (2025)

A pink mutant cat shooting lasers from its eyes - yeah, this release by Fuzzed Up & Astromoon Records surely caught my attention with its packaging, too. Even though I was at work I immediately checked it out hoping that the music would be good enough to justify ordering it. And damn, this shit is not just good, but absolutely on fire!

Gorgonis from Boston are a big band project with a Rock'n'Roll line-up plus a brass section and additional gang vocals, combining a wide array of styles like Garage Punk, Rockabilly, Horror and Morricone soundtrack music, Psychedelic Rock and johnzornish Avantgarde Jazz to an exciting wild ride that could totally work as the score for a Super 8 Tarantino tribute short film.

Speaking of short: The songs are compactly on point, so the nine tracks don't even add up to a total playing time of twenty-five minutes. But that's just the right length for this fun little album. You can - and should - just always spin it again if you need more. It's a feral, loudly meowing killer!

DÉLIRANT - Thoughteater (2025)

I've already reviewed this deliciously horrifying slab of Dissonant Deathened Black Metal back in February, but as so often with releases from Sentient Ruin Laboratories it took a while until this awesome looking tape became available for a reasonable price in Europe.

And not that this fact needed further confirmation - but yes, Délirant's "Thoughteater", a sonic nightmare in seven chapters, remains of of the sickest Extreme Metal releases of the year. Yet after almost six months I still cannot close my review of this gloriously discordant maelstrom better then I already did, so I'll just lazily copy that whole last paragraph:

"Thoughteater" feels like the horrific freeze frame of the moment Saturn's son realizes that Francisco Goya is making his father fucking eat him alive. What a dickhead! And what a brain-levelling blast!

CH'AHOM - Knots Of Abhorrence (2023)

Alongside Délirant I also purhased a Sentient Ruin tape, which is a little older. Ch'ahom's debut album has been released in 2023, the same year I got the compilation of their first four demos.

"Knots Of Abhorrence" doesn't stray from the band's former path, yet only increases the quality of the German Death/Black Metal group's music. It's still dedicated to Aztec blood cults, intercuts its attacks of dissonant brutality with accordingly ritualistic flutes and percussions - and almost tries to hide its Progressive influences and technical masterclass in a swampy low-fi aesthetic. So if you don't pay attention you might miss that this actually a pretty amazing, atmospherically dense Death Metal killer.

With "Path to Ixtab" there's only one track that had already been released previously, the other five tracks (including the digital only twelve-minute bonus "Ts'Ono'Ot") are all new - or were new in 2023 -, so there's absolutely no reason not to include this in your sick collection of advanced ghoulish insanity.

NEVER SOL - Tell The Sea I'm Coming Back (2024)

From Sentient Ruin Laboratories to a label which dedicates itself even more to tapes, the diverse Czech underground herald Stoned To Death!

A while ago I couldn't resist their friendly discounts, which introduced me to the singer and solo artist Sára Vondrášková aka Never Sol. Her three-song EP "Tell the Sea I'm Coming Back" is based on the full droning sound of the pipe organ, so there's of course no way around comparisons to the great Anna von Hausswolff. And concerning the slowly moving monolithic instrumentals this is more than fair.

Vocally however Never Sol doesn't reach the same eccentric Kate Bush heights, but mostly stays more reserved inside a warm range which reminds me of the lower registers of Angel Olsen.
It's only during the mini album's second half that the singer explores a higher, more mystical and dramatic tone with higher notes. Both organ (plus some added synths) and voice build a huge and intense atmosphere, contributing to a very good release.

Even though I don't feel that Vondrášková has reached her full potential in terms of songwriting yet - the pieces are still missing a certain something to really make them stand out - I can only recommend this tape.

URN - Self Sabotage (2024)

Slovak composer, guitar player and long-time Danish resident (now living in Tuscany) Jakub Volovár released another album of tracks recorded in Aarhus under the moniker URN. And no, "Self Sabotage" isn't much easier to put into a box than "Recitál" from 2019.

Or maybe it actually is? Yeah, especially since with very few exceptions the upright bass and drumming remain stylistically consistent this can all in all safely be labeled as Jazz, even if the guitar occasionally explores other territories like Blues, Flamenco or Experimental Ambient.

Reading the description on Bandcamp I would argue that I don't experience the album by far as depressively melancholic as intended. The vibe of "Self Sabotage" is intimate and most the thirteen tracks seem rather relaxed - at least on the surface. There are subtly interwoven dark undertones. And there are also hints of funkier Fusion on one and rebellious Heavy Jazz on the other side. But URN doesn't approach these influences in a radical way, yet rather introduces everything harmonious and playfully. This whole album by design feels more like an eased juggling of ideas than a presentation of completely finished songs - and that's what actually makes up a large part of its appeal.

An interesting, somehow very private take on contemporary Jazz.

THE MOND - The Mond (2016)

The third Stoned To Death tape of this bunch is clearly the oldest release here. Yet as I am writing this there's still one last copy of this insane live recording available! So if you're a friend of chaotic improvisations between Psychedelic Rock, Avantgarde Jazz and Noise - don't think twice and get it!

The 2016 debut of Experimental maniacs The Mond delivers a very enjoyable take on free musical madness, mainly because the trio's instrumentation of "electrified trumpet", modular synths, drums and keyboards establishes an interesting, recognizable and hands down just cool trademark sound. "The Mond" is not the reinvention of music, but a very fun album for fans of raw Heavy Jazz and pleasently weird soundtracks to stuff falling down stairs.

MIIRA / HAGER/KAPUTT - Split (2025)

Am I saving the best for last? Maybe. I actually don't want to tie myself down on that. Yet undoubtly this split cassette on Nasse Records (limited to fifty copies) is something special.

Side A belongs to the German guitar/drums duo Miira and their twenty minute Post Rock epic "Unfollow Function". It's just amazing how big their sound feels. And this piece is more emotional, sophisticated and dynamic than their previous album "Wellness".  Huge and heartfelt.

Framed by church bells side B belongs to the duo of Philipp Hager (Zement) and Franz Joseph Kaputt, whose even longer track called "Beschluss der Ewigen Anbetung" ("Decree of Perpetual Adoration") is a calmer affair, which mixes a beautiful saxophone with acoustic guitar and Ambient sounds. It feels as if Smooth Jazz was meeting Appalachian Folk under the umbrella of Post Something on a small, softly lit living room stage.

Both sides complement each other perfectly, making this cassette an exemplary split release, which leaves nothing to be desired. 

cassette craze chronicles XL feat. BONG-RA, BRUIT ≤, DEEPSKY, LÉSION ÉTRANGE and TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE

Even though my player is driving me insane sometimes with complete unpredictability when a tape is worthy of being played and when not; eventually the machine will bend to my will. And I will keep feeding it with new stuff. Here the most recent additions to my cassette collection:

DEEPSKY - 1 Galactic Instant (2024)

At least as long as I haven't been to a full festival again, I'm still affected by the Post Roadburn Blues, so it seems fitting to begin with a tape I bought directly from the artists after their Offroad show in Tilburg's public library.

In little over forty minutes "1 Galactic Instant" features cosmic Ambient improvisations from 2023, recorded during two shows in Tilburg and one live stream.

Deepsky live in Tilburg 2025 

The guitar and effects / drums and percussions duo doesn't linger on ideas as endlessly as many other Psychedelic artists would do, but they're also not changing things up so fast that it could pull you out of the floating escapist state this music creates.

And even when Carmen Ra and Koen Wijnen get a bit louder and daring like towards the end of "Neptune" or play with a certain tension when they are "Circling the Ice Giant", the're always doing it within the atmospheric framework they've established.

Deepsky aren't on a mission to reinvent the wheel of relaxing Space music, but they're putting an interesting personal spin on it.

TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE - Heliospheric Dialogues (2024)

My second tape souvenir wasn't actually for sale at the festival, but a gift I received from a fellow Roadburner, who brought it with him from Montreal, because he thought I might appreciate it more than other people who he could have given it to. And you can be sure that I'm indeed enjoying it very much.

Tempête Solaire is a trio featuring Drone guitar master Eric Quach (thisquietarmy), which is already a plus. Yet this also fuels expectations this EP is subverting y being much more Jazz-oriented than what I've heard of his huge output so far.
His role next to Eric Craven on drums and Elyze Venne-Deshaies on saxophone is not even playing guitar, but eight-string bass. In "Nuages Magnétiques" they are starting on a vivid Free Jazz journey with some eery modern effect twists. It's dark and droning, yet also Spiritual and transcendent.

Both the "Dove Manoeuvre" and "Syzygy" show a more Psychedelic, yet also faster and much funkier side of Tempête Solaire. But don't think you have figured these tracks out too quick, because the unsettling Space sounds and distortions you wouldn't have heard in your grandpa's Jazz trio, will probably correct your assumptions immediately. It's a special niche sound. And I wish we could hear more of it that these very fine nineteen minutes.  

BONG-RA - Black Noise (2025)

It took me a while to decide in which format I wanted to purchase the new album of Jason Köhnen's main band, which once again has shifted its shape significantly.
I ultimately chose the tape from Tartarus Records over vinyl or CD, because the simple black box just fits the album title "Black Noise" the best.

Musically Bong-Ra partly returns to the Electronic break-beat solo project days as last celebrated on "Vaseline", completely abandons the saxophone Jazz elements of "Meditations", but definitely keeps the riff power and heaviness of "Antediluvian".
You can also expect sludgy Doom influences, yet embedded in a very different context, because the now Industrial Metal trio (which has since also released a cover of Godflesh's "Cold World") just is a different beast.

As I haven't been too keen on every of Köhnen's past combinations of Metal and electronic beats I came in a bit sceptical and needed a couple of listens until I was fully hooked, but boy, these nine tracks are actually an enormously satisfying throwback to the heydays of Nineties Industrial Metal, including a certain two-dimensional flatness of its synthetic sounds and sawing guitars. But somehow it's just what this delightfully demonic soundtrack to the demolition of mankind needs.

Select influences from Jourgensen and Broadrick, killer riffs, distorted hollow screams, obligatory voice samples and a mad drum computer going berserk. And the gruesome hopeless darkness of the closer "Blissful Ignorance" alone... Yeah, that's some great brutal noise. "Black Noise" rules. 

LÉSION ÉTRANGE - Lésion Étrange (2025)

Think there's an easy cheat code for writing music reviews by just reading the Bandcamp tags? Well, then try this release by Arsenic Solaris: "black metal  experimental  extreme metal  drone  free improvisation  jazz  jazzgaze  noise  postrock  Lyon".

Well, ok... forget what I've just said, because this actually helps, I guess. So why do I even bother always to find my own angle? Whatever, these two longtracks of twenty-three ("Alpha") and eighteen ("Omega") minutes by Lésion Étrange are really something!

Imagine Olhava's infinity-embracing Blackgaze, but with a more Heavy Jazz-reminisent drumming. A hypnotic swirl of Post Rock guitar licks and layers of Noise spiraling towards... a resolution in smooth yet menacing, dynamically grooving Ambient atmosphere, which finally grows back into the beautiful primal chaos of creation.
A dissonant yet magnetically transfixing meditation fades into celestial Drone. Ghost winds are howling through the void until they are blasted away by an annihilating Blut Aus Nord cacaphony. Only a soothing triumvirate of Swing, Folk and Ambient can bring you down after this.

Phew, what a journey!

BRUIT ≤ - The Age Of Ephemerality (2025)

The surely most noted album of this lot has to be the new work of the French Post Rockers Bruit ≤, which comes with a self-conception the word ambituous seems almost too small for.

Recorded as a patchwork of different techniques and approaches, from programmed demos over free improvisations to explorations of sonic space in a church with a variety of guest musicians on brass and guitars, "The Age Of Ephemerality" feels like a snapshot of humanity from a cosmic perspective.

What happened so suddenly between the age of a depopulated Europe under feudal religious reign and the post-capitalist chains of global digital slavery?
You could write books upon books about questions like this. Or you let this band which talks remarkably loud and detailed about its process and message for an instrumental group, actually deliver on the promise of their words and give you at least a highly impressive idea of an answer while they melt together centuries of musical expression from church organ and classical strings to analogue synthesizers, digital programming and the huge dynamic potential of dreaming, contemplating, urging and devastating Post Rock to a towering whole that can hardly be believed to be created just by four dudes from France and their friends.

Even though it's put together from a lot more fragmented, sometimes seemingly random pieces, this album even eclipses the band's widely lauded 2021 release "The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again". This is how you fill instrumental Post Rock with meaning to the brim. Absolutely huge!

Thankfully the creators of this tape edition from Frozen Records took it as serious as it deserves and didn't half-ass its design.

Hanging in the Void with ODIOUS SPIRIT, SARMAT, SLEEP PARALYSIS and THE OVERMOLD

Who doesn't like a package from the weird Avantgarde and Extreme Metal specialist label I. Voidhanger Records? Here's my latest one. It contains four CDs, two of them in regular, the other two in DVD-tray-sized digipaks.

We're starting with the arguably most traditional release, a Death Metal banger from last year:

ODIOUS SPIRIT - The Treason Of Consciousness (CD) (2024)

Well, actually... Don't let yourself be fooled by my usage of the word traditional, since we're in very subjective territory here!

Because while in theory Odious Spirit are playing a quite oldschool brand of technical Death Metal with lots of sick lead guitars, blast and double bass attacks, their slightly Blackened Dissonant sound completely refuses to feel nostalgic - not due to some special shtick, but just because mastermind James Oskarbski has an oustanding flair for composing classicaly inspired riffs and melodies which somehow feel completely fresh, even though they are undeniably one hundred percent Metal and should all have been used by other artists decades ago.

An impressive proof of Death Metal not being dead at all - with the fitting and appropriately presented cover artwork.

SARMAT - Upgrade (CD) (2025)

Obviously Sarmat's spiritual successor to the 2023 "Dubious Disk" EP is a very different beast. While their ferocious Progressive Death Metal is just as strong, the New Yorkers also make sure to bring the Jazz with trumpets, keytar (!) and upright bass. And yeah, they're bringing a lot of it, with a cast of musicians that knows exactly what it's doing.

Both the fourteen-minute title track, which includes themes from "Landform" of their full album "Determined To Strike", and the shorter, but even wilder trumpet trip "Serum Visions" are prime examples of how to merge creative Extreme Metal with Jazz Fusion and unhinged John Zorn school Avantgarde. Bonkers and brilliant stuff for everyone who would like a much jazzier and mr.bunglishly insane version of Imperial Triumphant (whose bass player is also contributing to this EP again).

You know I fucking love this shit - and you should too. How else could I possibly take you serious from now on?   

THE OVERMOLD - The Overmold (CD) (2025)

Also an album which feels very much inspired by New York Avantgarde, but in a completely different way, much more akin to "Choirs Of The Eye" era Kayo Dot, is the self-titled debut of the Drone Doom duo The Overmold.

Drummer Tim Wyskida and guitarist / bassist Mick Barr open the album with a over twelve minutes of atmospheric rise and decay, crescendo and descent, over and over again... until finally you realize that a song has arrived. Or has it? It's almost to slow to tell. But don't think the whole thrirty-five minutes of this track will stay this way! No, this will soon go into much more agile directions you won't expect... The whole thing is a super dynamic and suspenseful unorthodox journey for friends of Toby Driver, Dylan Carlson, Insect Ark (where Wyskida is drumming too), but also Sumac, Swans and minimalist Experimental Jazz.

Even though on paper the three following - only four to six minutes short - pieces may look like an afterthought, but being a little more "to the point" and featuring more prominent vocals, they're actually an important completion of the album as a whole.

The Overmold demand patience and attention, but once you let their sound in it will captivate and fascinate you. 

SLEEP PARALYSIS - Sleep Paralysis (CD) (2025)

You think we've already talked about the wildest release in this bunch? Think again! Conceptually Sleep Paralysis's debut is a very stringent work dealing with all kinds of nightly mental horrors. And musically there are also the clear leitmotifs of a base in Black Metal on one and a lot of piano on the other side.

That piano opens the album like the prologue to a silent movie, but remains a key element through most of album's eleven tracks. It seems inspired by Italo horror cinema and Classical composers, but it also swings, does the Honky Tonk or erupts in Free Jazz explosions like in the Deathjazz chaos of "Sarmat" (the album, not the band!) by Effluence.

With these pillars in place Stephan Knapp's solo project would already provide a sufficient reign of brilliant psychological terror, but like the randomness of a "Fever Dream" and the mind illogically jumping around during "Stress", Sleep Paralysis doesn't stop there.
At any given moment the album can also surprise you with Electronic stuff like menacingly glitchy beats in combination with Vaporwave (of all things!) keyboards or a hilarious use of a Windows error sound effect, which is really confusing when you're listening to the this the first time on your PC.

No, despite the bloodcurling idea this album doesn't shy away from musical  humour. If you're still not over that possibility in a Black metal context in 2025, why are you even reading my blog? Hush and away with you! All others: Enjoy this fantastic phantasmagoric madness!