Suffering so you don't have to!
Metalcatto
Alright, it’s time. One of the most anticipated releases of the year has finally arrived. Love it or hate it, but nobody remains indifferent to Gaerea. I was skeptical at the beginning myself, and I still think Limbo remains their best work, though Coma came frustratingly close to dethroning it. So the question is: how is Loss going to top a remarkable run that almost no band has managed in the last ten years? We’ll see.
Metalcatto
There are many bands named Worm, Wormed, or something like that. I can’t keep track. They also don’t tend to have artwork that looks straight out of 1995. To make matters more difficult Foreverglade is a hard act to follow. Hence, I was ready to skip Worm. However, you people online, with your unqualified hype, convinced me to give this album a chance even if I’m late. So here I am, trying to see if your taste changes my mind.
Metalcatto
There might be no other band in extreme Metal that has inspired more dank, enduring memes than your dark majesty, Mayhem. I even conducted a retro-review of the seminal album back in the day. However, I approached its latest release, Liturgy of Death (wow, how surprising that title is…), with next to no expectations. The central question looms: how can a band with such a famously chaotic and tragic trajectory possibly offer something genuinely compelling and interesting decades after its infamous peak?
Metalcatto
Let’s face it: if you got money every time a Brutal Metal band had a name that implied knife play, you’d be the one invading some defenseless country that has done you no wrong. Either way, Stabbing is supposed to be that Brutal Death Metal band—the one that consistently knocks it out of the park. Its new album, Eon of Obscenity, is precisely engineered to deliver that promise, an auditory experience meant to shake us harder than losing our job on a Friday. But since music this extreme is inherently inhumane, it risks leaving us completely numb. So, what’s the final verdict?
Metalcatto
Full disclosure: I’m a longtime fan of Omnium Gatherum. I’ve been following them since The Redshift and still consider New World Shadows and Beyond to be Melodic Death Metal classics. (If you haven’t listened to them yet, stop wasting your time and go fix that.) So when May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way dropped, I was all in. That said, I’m not blind to the band’s controversies — It’s always been compared, sometimes unfairly, to its peers. With OG, you never really know what you’re going to get: a genre-defining masterpiece or a divisive curveball. Either way, it’s never boring.
Metalcatto
It’d be a total understatement to say that Vildhjarta is a strange band. How can I explain it? You know how Meshuggah plays convoluted rhythms, but somehow there’s always a 4×4 groove going on in the drums? Well, forget about that here and get ready to embrace absolute rhythmic chaos — + där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar + is. I know, that name looks like main effects in a linear model (this is my nerdiest joke to date, I’m so proud!), but that only makes me more excited. We’re here to be surprised, right?
Enough procrastinating! It’s time to finish what we started a few days ago by giving our “expert” opinion on Imperial Triumphant’s Goldstar. We even made a top to celebrate this occasion. If that doesn’t tell you how pumped I am for this release, then I don’t know what else to do for you. No need for long intros—we all know Imperial Triumphant is one of the most Avant-Garde bands of the last ten years. Not many can compete with the level of urban horror these guys conjure up, but as a huge fan, I’m nervous! Can you blame me?
What? Are you surprised that MER Industries is covering such a mainstream band? You’ll dare to call us not Metal anymore. As if we care. What we do care about is giving even the most commercial band a fair chance. I’m sure those of you with a love for anything Gothic will know Lacuna Coil needs no introduction and that despite my skepticism for Sleepless Empire, I’m willing to suspend my prejudices for a few hours while I analyze another album from a now ancient band.
Well, this is going to be tricky. You see, I’m what people would call an old-fashioned Tribulation fan. Here I am, eating chips and scratching my head, while the band has morphed from a Black Metal outfit into a Goth Rock one. Evidently, I’m a bigger fan of its first era, but I’m open to giving Sub Rosa in Æternum a chance. Goth albums typically fall into two categories: they either evoke the horrors of the night, or end up as cringeworthy festivals of edgy people in leather. Let’s see which one this album turns out to be.
Continuing the barrage of releases this week, we had to consider some upcoming EPs, too. It wasn’t easy to decide, but the sting of regret made me hold onto these two rather than let them fade into oblivion. I gave them a spin or two, or three, and good thing I did—things went from weird to interesting pretty fast. Here are two EPs that might just bring a bit of color back to your bleak life.
Metal Eclipse Reviews 