Suffering so you don't have to!
Metalcatto
I might’ve said it before, but this year seems to be a big one for Blackened Death Metal, and Shadows wants in on the trend with Miseria. At first glance, the album gives the impression that it’s more than ready to do the job—punching a hole through your emotions and unleashing the evil beast that lurks inside your heart. Does that make any sense? No clue. But what I do know is what this album offers, and I’m about to tell you.
Metalcatto
Let me say something straight: I meant to review this way earlier, but life (and summer holidays) got in the way. Even after the delay, I couldn’t bring myself to ignore Floating. A band claiming to mix Death Metal with Post-Punk? That doesn’t happen every day. I needed to hear it to believe it! Hesitating Lights might just be that weird record that ends up on the “best genre fusion” list by the end of the year. Or am I being overly optimistic? Is it too soon? I don’t know—but let’s get to work, ok?
Metalcatto
I usually don’t give much context about the bands we review at MER, but this time is different—and not just because it’s a Swedish band again. Eternal Darkness – Eternal Darkness is a debut that took 35 years to get done. I wasn’t even born when the first idea for it started emerging! And yet, I find out the band has already split. Dead before being properly born—well, it can’t get more Death Metal than that. Let’s get to it!
Ixone
Very few albums have impacted me as deeply as Naglfar’s Harvest, and a huge part of that is, of course, its lyrical content. Why is that? To start, it’s fitting to address the fact that, generally, in Black Metal, when someone wants to explore dark states of being, the result often ends up being an absolute trauma dump of a DSBM record. Yeah… there are better ways to do it. Luckily, Naglfar found a solution to that problem on this album. But how did they manage that? By doing quite literally what symbolist poets were doing in the late 19th century: assigning external elements to inner states. However, in Harvest, this is done with far less subtlety and far more visceral intensity—which, being Black Metal, is exactly what one might expect.
Metalcatto
I was supposed to take it easy on local bands, but what can I do if they keep sending me stuff? Lepra, as the name implies, takes itself seriously. These guys clearly loved Kingdom of Heaven (yours truly has more mixed feelings about it), but considering where they come from, Mortuus Morgana should be one of those quiet, under-the-radar releases that doesn’t impress many, right? Well, to be fair, that was just me being condescending. Just because an album shows up without noise or drama doesn’t mean it can’t hit hard.
Stargazer Scholar
In 1741, J.S. Bach published a set of compositions that later became known as the Goldberg Variations, all the thirty pieces whereof explored the bass line and the chord progression of a single aria. In 1934, Sergey Rachmaninoff wrote his Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, which reproduced, inverted, and otherwise transfigured the great Italian’s 24th Caprice. In 2025, Katatonia’s new album, Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State, comes out… And I reckon you can see what I’m driving at.
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?
Metalcatto
Despite my undying love for my local (Swedish) scene, Ghost has always been a tricky one for me. I even contemplated skipping Skeletá because the album isn’t even Metal. In fact, sometimes I wondered if it was even Rock, or just Pop/Rock. I’ll say it without hesitation: the band hasn’t truly had my attention since Meliora — that was its peak performance, and after that, it’s been hit or miss. So, I have no illusions of being impressed with this new release. Yet, here I am, giving it a chance.
One could argue that I’m now an old school Soliloquium fan, since Contemplations was my introduction to the band. Needless to say, I still listen to it today. It’s that perfect mix of Prog and Swedish Melodeath that’s not always easy to find. The band has done interesting things since then, but Famine seems to aim for a more personal direction – channeling all the suffering and pain its creator went through (something common in Metal, let’s be honest). So the real question is: will this satisfy us or leave us hungry?
To me, it’s always been a mystery how Arch Enemy became the big band it is today. There was nothing particularly different in what it did back in the early 2000s (granted, it had a frontwoman growling, but was that really new then?). Yet, it had a solid formula that was immediately recognizable. They gave us a few classics, and I’d be lying if I said Wages of Sin and Doomsday Machine aren’t childhood staples for me. Ever since, the band has felt washed—there, I said it. So, with zero expectations, I enter Blood Dynasty, hoping it’s at least better than Duke Dynasty (my worst joke to date, yay!).
Metal Eclipse Reviews 