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Four years after Brymir dropped fourth LP Voices in the Sky, the Finnish quartet reemerges with fifth opus, What We Leave Behind. Despite parting ways with longtime guitarist Sean Haslam last year, fans of the band will be happy to hear Brymir’s core sound remains intact. Sleek melodic leads coat What We Leave Behind’s three-quarters of an hour, and they go down smoother than an ice-cold lonkero after an honest day’s work. Brymir’s third album Wings of Fire introduced me to the ensemble, and as Dr. Wvrm alluded to in his Voices in the Sky write-up, I was one of those won over by Wings’ spectacular apotheosis of symphonic melodeath. Voices in the Sky cleared the goalpost as well, and so I come to What We Leave Behind with great expectations—does it complete the Bryfecta?

A natural continuation of Voices in the Sky, the front half of What We Leave Behind brings sweet, candy-coated confections dusted with spirited orchestrations and earworms galore. This sort of songcraft can inundate systems with a sucrose-fueled sugar rush, but fortunately Brymir adds enough substance to their numbers that they don’t rely on sweetmeats alone. The opening batch of songs kicks off What We Leave Behind with exactly the kind of pop-forward stickiness that Brymir thrives on. “Tempestbound” supplies a scorching cut of soaring melodeath, “What We Leave Behind” beckons with wistful melodies and synth accents that remind me of Insomnium, and “Sleipnir” kicks with the strength of eight legs, buoying Joona Björkroth’s (Battle Beast) incendiary guitar work and drummer Patrik Fält’s blistering performance with infectious verve. “True Darkness” rounds out the front of the album, and it swaps the high ‘n’ mighty splendor of the preceding tracks with an iciness recalling Wintersun’s symphodeath and engendering a balanced attack through What We Leave Behind’s side A.

The back half of What We Leave Behind retains the same sweeping grandeur as the fore, although a few small hiccups inform a hint of choppiness that leaves the album a tad front-loaded. “Buried Legion” rips listeners asunder with an atmospheric malevolence heretofore unexplored by Brymir, but it’s bookended by instrumentals that dull its impact. In the promo materials, Brymir mentions that What We Leave Behind is the band’s most ‘sinister album yet.’ While this assertion misses me through “What We Leave Behind,” “True Darkness” and “Buried Legion” indeed embody some of Brymir’s most ominous textures to date. “The Roaring King” and “Broken Dawn” likewise elicit undercurrents of foreboding and lament, although Brymir never loses the threads of invigorating power that keep What We Leave Behind from ever sounding downright malignant. Album closer “How Much Is the Fish”¹ ends matters on a fun note, leaving behind an uplifting aftertaste.

What We Leave Behind glimmers with a glossy production while the music brims with big riffs and choruses, but Brymir’s impact can be better qualified by how it makes me feel. Those allergic to major chords and triumphant choral swells might not be convinced, but power and energy electrify Brymir’s music with galvanizing gusto. Thrilling surges of technicality collide with rousing vocals and stirring choirs, investing tracks like “Tempestbound” and “What We Leave Behind” with an unbridled opulence that makes me want to take up a cause. Overall, What We Leave Behind radiates a majestic earnestness I find utterly charming, and even with a few minor structural qualms, I can’t resist Brymir’s draw. Unfortunately, issues with the stream interrupted the transition between songs with buffering every time, constantly taking me out of the experience and making it difficult to appreciate the album’s flow and cohesion.

Ultimately, What We Leave Behind dazzles with highly polished melodeath that lends itself to repeated spins. Despite a tonal shift a third of the way through the album, Brymir never sounds less than slick and stunning. Each song bears its own identity, yet they all weave together with masterful performances, concise songwriting, and massive guitar and synth hooks. Though I don’t think What We Leave Behind completely measures up to Wings of Fire or Voices in the Sky, I’m open to being wrong once I can experience the album as intended rather than being at the mercy of a glitchy stream. Either way, Brymir beams with bouncy ebullience even at their darkest, and this undeniable jubilance is exactly the sort of melodeath ingredient I find utterly irresistible.² Of all the records you could Leave Behind as the year starts winding down, don’t let Brymir be one of them.

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Rating: Very Good
DR: NA | Format Reviewed: Bry Me a River (Stream)
Label: Napalm Records
Websites: Website | Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram
Releases Worldwide: October 2nd, 2026

The post Brymir – What We Leave Behind Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

Their second chosen single.

The post Comeback Kid Launch “Yesterday’s Gone” Music Video Featuring Incendiary’s Brendan Garrone appeared first on Theprp.com.

British extreme metal pioneers Venom have shared the news that frontman Conrad Thomas Lant aka Cronos has died at 63.
Read more…

With all the wind and rain that hit the east coast last week, I spent a good deal of time indoors going through my backlog. My Bandcamp wishlist was getting out of hand, and I had about a quarter-crate of LPs to work through, so this installment of Cheap Thrills is packed with all sorts of name-your-price goodies from the last few months, as well as one curveball from almost 30 years ago that just got a physical release. 

You know the drill: support underground artists this Bandcamp Friday (and every day, really) by picking up some tunes and merch!

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Starseed – Cosmic Conspiracy (May 1, 1997)

Yep, you read that date correctly. As much as I hate calling things “hidden gems” (it’s one of the most overused and meaningless phrases that fans and collectors use, right up there with “white whale” and “grail”), it’s hard to think of another suitable metaphor for Starseed’s lone 1997 release, which was recently given a vinyl release thanks to Ixiol Productions. Cosmic Conspiracy is riffy, space-faring death metal with a healthy dose of synthesizer harmony and ambience. There aren’t any extended prog sections that allow your mind to wander: rather, Starseed grabs your attention from the very start and doesn’t let up for the EP’s entire 19 minute duration.

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Trhä – ∫um’ad∂ejja o§tovaj and din cëppehen lëvatsë ë∫ nu debu£ gjërima (September 21, 2026)

Reset the clock – there are two more Trhä releases out, just in time for fall. It’s been nearly nine months since the last album, which feels like forever in Trhä time, but Ojeda has been plenty busy with touring this past year. If you can catch any of his projects live, whether it be Trhä, Sadness, Life, or Midwinter Sunset, you should really make it a priority to do so.

Up first is ∫um’ad∂ejja o§tovaj, the more varied and “upbeat” of the pair, which cycles between the hyper melodic and fantastical black metal that one expects from Trhä, more midpaced and measured atmospheric fare, and occasional forays into hardcore (or, dare I say, metalcore) via big stomping power chords. According to the Bandcamp page, these tracks were written over the last few years, but even for an “odds and ends” album, this is still an(other) enjoyable release.

By contrast, din cëppehen lëvatsë ë∫ nu debu£ gjërima (say that five times fast) is a rawer, hazier affair than its companion, hewing much closer to that “classic” Trhä sound. The synths are pushed way up in the mix, emphasizing the project’s dreamy, whimsical side. The album is a fitting reminder of the project’s purpose: to explore the nostalgic, magical kingdom that Thét Älëf (Ojeda’s alter ego) calls home.

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Ihloosuhree – Slaven Der Ontbinding (August 12, 2026)

With their second album, Belgium’s Ihloosuhree delivers a psychedelic black metal experience just in time for spooky season. The friend who recommended this joked that it took him a minute to realize that the band’s name is an exaggerated phonetic spelling of “Illusory” (he initially thought “it was just Dutch”). The name is certainly appropriate, though, considering how haunting and gloomy Slaven Der Ontbinding is. Hypnotic tremolo riffs smear past as growling bass guitars and pounding drums open up a chasm into the very fabric of reality. The vocals are particularly unhinged, escalating from throaty barks to tortured howls–sometimes on the same track. I’m not saying that you should toss this album on your Halloween party playlist, but if you did, it would certainly make for an unforgettable evening.

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Maȟpíya Lúta – Wówalitake (August 7, 2026)

This mysterious project’s third full-length album is yet another raw atmospheric black metal tribute to Red Cloud of the Oglala Lakota tribe. On Wówalitake, the enigmatic Maȟpíya Lúta  amplifies the dusty ambience that framed the stomping melodic riffs on previous records, resulting in a record that feels reigned-in and dignified. The cover art reinforces this theme—long after his military and political heyday, Red Cloud continued to be a spokesman for the Lakota well into his 80s. But we all know you didn’t necessarily come here for a history lesson, so the question is, are the riffs good? They are indeed, and what Wówalitake lacks in raw aggression it certainly makes up for with grand, stately movements that still pack plenty of crunch while bearing a newfound sense of gravity.

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D.E.R. – Tempo Severo (September 25, 2025)

We’ll end this installment with a pair of rippin’ grind releases courtesy of Nerve Altar. Up first is the debut full-length from Brazilian quartet D.E.R., whose name is an acronym for Destruction and Regression (albeit in Portuguese). This album kicked my ass the first time I heard it…and the second…and the third. There’s almost a black-thrash edge to some tracks thanks to the razor sharp tremolo-picked guitars and machine gun blastbeats. Because these elements tend to occupy the upper registers, the bass guitar punches right through the mix. Say goodbye to those pesky mids—and the top of your skull—because Tempo Severo takes no prisoners.

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Hallucination Realized – Developing Reality (May 25, 2026)

Hallucination Realized’s debut album arrives after a string of splits, and like Tempo Severo, it’s a real doozy. Developing Reality leans more into powerviolence territory, with tempo changes that hit like a semi truck. The band also makes great use of noise on tracks like the brooding “Eschaton”. After opening with drum fakeout, the track erupts into thrashing chaos before that same intro beat returns, accompanied by huge sludgy riffs and crackling waves of static. I’d be interested to see if Hallucinated Realized ever goes full Noise Grind Power Death, but if they do, I’ll be there.

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Conrad “Cronos” Lant, longtime singer and bassist for the pioneering English underground metal band Venom, has massed away. The band announced Lant’s passing in a social media post today. No cause of death has been reported. Lant was 63.

The post Venom’s Conrad “Cronos” Lant Dead At 63 appeared first on Stereogum.

Kicking off ‘rocktober’.

The post Twiztid Stream Their Version Of Papa Roach’s “Getting Away With Murder” appeared first on Theprp.com.

Cronos, the bassist, singer and face of Venom for the better part of five decades, has died at 63. The band confirmed the death of Conrad Lant this week, according to Louder; no cause has been given. His son Nathan wrote: ‘I want to thank all of the Legions for all of the support you have given my dad over the years.

He has laid down his soul, and his music will live on.’ The Cronos Venom story is one of the strangest and most consequential in British metal: a band from Newcastle who couldn’t really play, who recorded two albums in two years that half the metal world laughed at, and who, with the title of the second one, handed an entire genre its name. He had just released Venom’s twelfth album, Into Oblivion, and he died with the thing he built still running.

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What We Know

Not much, and that’s deliberate. Venom confirmed the death. The family statement came from Nathan Lant and was about gratitude, not detail. There is no cause, no location, no account of the circumstances, and nobody close to him has offered one. We’re not going to guess, and I’d ask you not to in the comments.

What we can say is that it was not a man winding down. Venom announced a new studio album earlier this year, the first since 2018, and delivered it — Into Oblivion, the twelfth record to carry his name. The lineup around him was the one he’d had for years: Stuart ‘Rage’ Dixon on guitar and Danny ‘Dante’ Needham on drums.

The Man Who Named A Genre

Conrad Lant was born in London in 1963 and moved to Newcastle at eight. He joined the band that became Venom in 1978, at the height of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, and if you want to understand why Venom mattered you have to understand what the NWOBHM sounded like around them. Iron Maiden were tight. Saxon were tight. Def Leppard were already looking at America.

Venom were none of those things. Welcome To Hell, released in 1981, is a record where the bass is distorted because nobody told Cronos it shouldn’t be, where the vocals are a bark because he couldn’t sing like Dickinson and decided not to try, and where the songs are about Satan because that was the fastest way to make your parents’ generation hate you. It was recorded in days. It sounds like it. And it’s one of the most important heavy metal records ever made, because every teenager in a bedroom who couldn’t play either heard it and thought: I can do that.

Then, a year later, Black Metal. The album is faster and nastier than the debut, but its real legacy is two words on the sleeve. Nobody in 1982 thought they were christening anything. A decade later, when Norwegian kids who’d grown up on Venom started burning churches and recording in the woods, the genre they built needed a name and they already had one. Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Immortal — every one of them traces back to a Newcastle band putting a title on a record because it sounded evil.

That’s not the only line that runs from him. The 1984 European tour had a young support band from San Francisco called Metallica, and the thrash movement that followed took Venom’s speed and Venom’s attitude and learned to play. Slayer took the Satan. Metallica took the velocity. Cronos never got the credit either of them did, and he never seemed to expect it. Venom’s name on the list of Rock Hall snubs will stay there a long time, and it should.

Leaving, Returning, Staying

He left Venom in 1987 for a solo band that carried his own name, and the records from that period are mostly for completists. He came back in 1995, and from then on Venom was Cronos’s band in every sense. Mantas and Abaddon, the other two-thirds of the classic trio, eventually went their own way and formed Venom Inc., which meant for the last decade there were two Venoms on the road, with the original three split one and two.

That split never fully healed, but it had been thawing. Mantas has spent the past couple of years publicly calling for the classic lineup to reunite, and as recently as this year said Cronos had been invited to a Welcome To Hell anniversary celebration. It didn’t happen. Now it can’t.

What He Was Actually Like

Here’s the thing about Cronos that the obituaries will get wrong. He was not a cartoon. The on-stage version — the bullet belts, the growl, the pentagram — was a performance he was completely clear-eyed about, and in interviews he was funny, sharp, and faintly amused that anyone had ever taken the Satan stuff literally. He knew Venom couldn’t play in 1981. He thought that was the point. He’d tell you that the energy of three lads from Newcastle who’d never been in a studio was the record, and that cleaning it up would have killed it.

He was right. Forty-five years of bands that learned to play and lost the thing prove it.

What Happens Now

Venom’s plans for Into Oblivion — touring, promotion, whatever was on the calendar — are presumably on hold, though the band hasn’t said. Nathan Lant’s statement addressed the Legions, Venom’s name for their fans since the early eighties, and that’s where the tributes will come from first. Mantas and Abaddon haven’t commented at the time of writing. When they do, it’ll matter more than most.

Put on Welcome To Hell tonight. Play it loud enough that it sounds as bad as it did in 1981. That was always the right way to hear it.

TL;DR

• Cronos, born Conrad Lant, bassist and singer of Venom, has died at 63. The band confirmed it; no cause of death has been given.
• His son Nathan thanked the Legions: ‘He has laid down his soul, and his music will live on.’
• He joined Venom in 1978; Welcome To Hell (1981) and Black Metal (1982) gave extreme metal its blueprint and black metal its name.
• Left in 1987, returned in 1995, led Venom through 12 albums, the last being 2026’s Into Oblivion, with Rage and Dante.
• Mantas had invited him to a Welcome To Hell anniversary celebration this year. The classic lineup never reunited.

FAQ

Which Venom record changed your life — Welcome To Hell or Black Metal? Tell us in the comments, and play one tonight. Follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Venom’s Cronos Has Died, And Black Metal Lost The Man Who Named It appeared first on Loaded Radio.

Things looked bleak for a while there. Last year, while enduring a career lull and publicly struggling with his mental health, Lil Nas X was arrested on the streets of Los Angeles and faced four felony counts, including the risk of jail time. But the charges were dropped pending mental health treatment, which seems to be going well.

The post Lil Nas X Returns To Music With “World’s Greatest” appeared first on Stereogum.

Los Angeles-based band Niis have shared ‘No Flowers’, the latest single from their upcoming EP “Play Niis”, currently set for release 23rd October via Rise Records. The track comes with a glitchy, cyberpunk-style music video directed and edited by Marië Ramos. It follows ‘Earthquakes’, released earlier this month.

The track is distorted and intense, with vocalist Mimi Doe singing, “I just wanna feel alive“. “A lot of the songs on this record are about fitting into societal monotony,” says Doe of the track, “We forget to put ourselves first by doing things that bring us joy and make us feel something, or anything. And that’s something I really wanted to capture with the lyrics.”

Produced by Austin Coupe and Michael Shuman, “Play Niis” is a six-song, energetic EP about the search for joy and connection in a disconnected world. Coming up, Niis are heading on tour supporting Movements, Balance & Composure and Midrift across the US.

‘Play Niis’ EP artwork

NIIS 2026 US TOUR DATES
With Movements, Balance & Composure, & Midrift
7 Oct – Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo
8 Oct – Portland, OR – McMenamins Crystal Ballroom
10 Oct – San Jose, CA – San Jose Civic
12 Oct – Salt Lake City, UT – The Complex
14 Oct – Denver, CO – Mission Ballroom
15 Oct – Omaha, NE – Steelhouse Omaha
17 Oct – Cleveland, OH – Agora Theater & Ballroom
18 Oct – Chicago, IL – The Salt Shed
20 Oct – Royal Oak, MI – Royal Oak Music Theatre
21 Oct – Pittsburgh, PA – Stage AE
23 Oct – New York, NY – Terminal 5
24 Oct – Philadelphia, PA – Franklin Music Hall
25 Oct – Boston, MA – Roadrunner
28 Oct – Silver Spring, MD – The Fillmore Silver Spring
30 Oct – Richmond, VA – The National
31 Oct – Norfolk, VA – The NorVa
2 Nov – Raleigh, NC – The Ritz
4 Nov – St Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live
6 Nov – Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live Orlando
7 Nov – Atlanta, GA – Tabernacle
10 Nov – San Antonio, TX – Boeing Center at Tech Port
11 Nov – Dallas, TX – The Bomb Factory
13 Nov – Mesa, AZ – Mesa Amphitheatre
14 Nov – Santa Ana, CA – Observatory OC
15 Nov – Orlando, FL – Vans Warped Tour*

* Festival Date

The post Niis Share New Single and Video for ‘No Flowers’ appeared first on Rock Sound.

BETTER NOISE MUSIC (BNM) will take part in ROCKTOBER—the annual celebration of rock music for the entire month of October—with a vast array of new music and releases from the premiere independent music label’s chart-topping current roster as well as compilations from their extensive catalog of past acts. The label started festivities early, treating rock […]