I’m not the sunny type. I wear too much black for hot weather, and the close, humid climate Britain subjects us to in the summer months is torturous for me. So, coming into the hotter slots on the calendar, what better way to introduce some blessed frigidity than with that frostiest of genres – black metal. So here is Iselder to waft some hopefully rather chilly winds in my general direction; how do they fare?
I’ve been going back and forth on this one, because I can’t decide whether Iselder’s stripped-down back-to-basics black metal is exactly what the doctor ordered or if it’s a bit too thin on imagination. Possibly both. Their style enables them to be forceful and direct, which suits their embittered message, but it also straight-jackets them, prevents them from landing on a more singular identity outside of their Welsh-centric themes. For sure, it’s hard to argue against the Immortal-tinged frostbite of upbeat fare like “Impending War”, it’s incisor-sharp riffs ridged with permafrost. There’s good stuff here, no doubt. But it struggles to distinguish itself from its peers overall because there just isn’t much about it that’s new, original, or – unfortunately – exceptional.
Iselder do a thing that I like, but with the best will in the world to them, I’m struggling to connect with it. It feels like it will nail a good section, filled with righteous invective, but then lose steam when it has to move on from that riff. Take “Call to Arms” for example – it opens like the razing of Christendom, massacres amongst the holy host, blood upon the altar, all that good shit. But then then at 1.31 the momentum stalls. The position consolidates. It’s not bad, but the step back from scorched earth tactics is noticeable and forces a brake check into the mix. The song is essentially 3 riffs repeated, and when one of which feels like a smoke break, it gives the overall track this odd sense of being a little underdeveloped while also checking it’s own velocity twice. It’s true that I prefer it when the songs fire off like a sprint team being chased by randy bears, but even under the best circumstances, these riffs feel a bit stock standard. Phrasings that have been common parlance from the moment we all first sighted a Blaze in the Northern Sky, martial rhythms Marduk built a career around, so on and so forth. I can get on board with it when it’s at it’s most frantic, but even then I’m only ever at half-mast. “Embrace the End” has some tasty swaps between it’s verse and chorus and a suitably bombastic tempo, but it’s so philopatric that I find myself calling to mind the usual classics as points of reference, then wondering why I’m not just listening to them instead.
The best black metal sends a man scurrying back to Christ. It’s misanthropy scrawled on frost-clad cliff faces, blood flash-freezing to red snowflakes as it sprays into wind-whipped air. What Iselder presents is a competent addition to the style, but you can’t rise beyond your roots when you’ve nailed yourself to them. Which isn’t to say that I could do better, but these guys definitely could. I’d not suggesting that they need to get madly into King Crimson albums and fly off on esoteric tangents, but shit, maybe hitting the psychedelics and seeing where their talents could take them wouldn’t be the worst plan in the world. Iselder obviously have a top-shelf album in them in terms of their ability to play their instruments, but on this one at least their compositional skills sadly haven’t delivered the goods.
My Chemical Romance have shared three new versions of tracks that are set to appear on their upcoming 15th anniversay edition of ‘Danger Days’.
Set for release on July 10 via Reprise/Warner Records, the album will include the original tracklist fully remastered as well as nine bonus tracks. From ‘We Don’t Need Another Song About California’ to ‘Mastaa of Ravenkroft’, ‘Zero Percent’ to ‘F.T.W.W.W’, it’s the first time these tracks will be available on both streaming and vinyl.
It will be available in multiple 2LP configurations, including picture disc, zoetrope, and various colour variants, alongside CD and cassette.
So, to give you a taste of what the new master of the record is going to sound like, you can hear ‘Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back, ’S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W’ and ‘Summertime’ right now.
The immediate takeaway is just how luscious and full the tracks feel. ‘Save Yourself…’ is as big and bold a rock song as it should be, ‘S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W’ is flowery and sun-stained and ‘Summertime’ is indie-rock at its most romantic and rousing.
A new view on an album that continues to show just much depth it has all these years later.
“Change–and everything is change; nothing can be held on to–to the degree that you go with a stream, you see, you are are still, you are flowing with it. But to the degree you resist the stream, then you notice that the current is rushing past you and fighting you. So swim with it, go with it, and you’re there.”
This bit of wisdom, provided by British philosopher Alan Watts, appears via soundbite early in the second side of Circadian Promise, the third full length release forthcoming from Connecticut’s Fires in Distance. Change is the iron law of life, Watts tells us, so we may as well roll with it. Sound advice in general, but you may find it particularly useful in grappling with the U.S. melodic death-doomers’ latest effort.
Circadian Promise finds the band changing in the ways life invariably does, with subtle shifts catalyzing significant impact. Consider the riffing approach the band employs here; the sound is pleasingly similar to what we heard on 2023’s mighty Air Not Meant for Us – mid-paced, melodic and rendered in a bruising baritone. But unlike on their previous effort, the band is no-longer composing the kind lyrical, multi-bar riffs that positioned them, at least in my mind, as a contemporary answer to Opeth’s first two albums. Here, instead, the rhythm guitar parts are compact and seem to be making room for more expressive lead work.
Track 2, “To You, the Author of My Fade,” begins with a tidy melodic death metal riff that wouldn’t sound out of place on Dark Tranquillity’s Damage Done album, but played a few steps down the neck. On its own, it’s about half as interesting as any of the standout guitar parts we got on Air Not Meant for Us, but as the band iterates, introduces some syncopated drums and builds to a triumphant post-bridge guitar solo, you come to appreciate the trade-off of virtuosic riffwork for matured songcraft.
Release date: June 12, 2026. Label: Prosthetic Records.
We witness this dynamic in full flight on album standout “Lightless Days of the Songless Bird,” which features a chorus built around an elegant lead-line dancing atop a bare-bones and down-tuned chord progression. While these parts are engaging enough on their own, the real pleasure of the song rests not on any single guitar part, but instead on following the composition as it gradually introduces new riffs, adds new harmonic layers and eventually pours over into another cathartic solo. While it’s fair to say there isn’t a riff here that beats anything on Air–though the bit of guitar interplay that peeks out at the 5-minute-mark is fantastic–I’d offer that there probably isn’t a composition on the band’s previous work that matches the competence and confidence on display here.
Not all the changes Fires in the Distance display on Circadian Promise are quite so subtle. Those who’ve kept up with the band between releases surely know that vocalist Kristian Grimaldi was replaced by Brendan Hayter. Fans can debate the former front man’s significance relative to that of lead composer Yegor Savonin, but to my ears, Grimaldi’s absence is deeply felt. We’re squarely in the realm of subjective personal preference here, but Grimaldi’s baritone bark helped to ground the band’s sound in the style of early 2000s Gothic metal–think Finland’s Rapture and Italy’s Novembre–whereas Hayter’s Mikael Stanne-inspired high register delivery feels at odds with instrumentalists who do their best work on the low-end. Hayter also introduces some clean singing to the mix on Circadian Promise, and his performance is on time, in key and generally a worthwhile contribution to the band’s evolution as songwriters. But just as even really, ridiculously good-looking people need a distinctive beauty mark to truly catch our eye, I personally think Hayter could significantly benefit by adding a little ugly to his performance, rather than hewing safely to the middle ground. But here I am, resisting the stream as it rushes past me. Give me a dose of truth-serum, and I’d be hard pressed to isolate an objective flaw in Hayter’s vocal performance. I’d just have to admit that it’s simply new–the lead indicator of Fires in the Distance both subtly and significantly becoming a different band than the one that made Air Not Meant for Us an album that ranks quite high on my list of the decade’s best. Change … everything is change. You can stand against the stream or go with its flow; I’ve done a bit of both with Circadian Promise, but I’ve ultimately found the moments where I’ve done the latter enriching enough to recommend fans of this style to dive in as well.
Swedish Death Metal trio Furnace, the masters of the concept album, return with another tale in the shape of their seventh full-length album, Echoes Of A Distant Future, and who can resist a great storyline? I know I cannot.
This time around, it follows on from the narrative of 2024’s Trojan Hearse, which, as a quick recap, centred around a man who travels the kingdom of the dead, searching for his dead wife, only to find she had betrayed him in life and, as a result, was never his. On top of that, the afterlife was not quite what he expected.
Furnace – Echoes Of A Distant Future, a concept-driven death metal journey packed with alien intrigue, tension and power.
On Echoes Of A Distant Future, we find the central character escaping Hell via the arcane and necromantic Trojan Hearse, once again. He intends to return home, but instead reawakens in a distant, dystopian future where alien forces secretly dominate humanity, and he is drawn into a resistance movement.
The album “explores themes of survival, identity, and the enduring question of whether mankind can reclaim its fate.”
Musically, On Echoes Of A Distant Future reflects the enduring and engaging signature sound that makes Furnace albums instantly recognisable, hugely engaging, and delivers a fascinating storyline that grips your attention, thanks to Peter’s superb tale and the clarity of Rogga’s vocal delivery.
The album also features guest guitar solos by Kjetil Lynghaug, who also dropped a few solos on Trojan Hearse, as well as working with Rogga on many other projects, including Paganizer and Heir Corpse One.
First piece Shores Of Oblivion finds the central character departing from Hell via the “engine” fully expecting to return to the living world and his own time. It is haunting to open and rapidly picks up pace. The repeat melody is optimistic, gradually generating into something all the more crushing and searing with spiralling and sharp riffs. I love this gradual intensifying. It really builds on the excitement of what is to come.
Moving on to Vast Horizons, which sees the central figure realising the place he has been transported to is not where he expected to be, but a different and unexpectedly dystopian future. Again, it is a haunting builder and features the first guest solo midway from Kjetil.
In Refracted City Lights, the album single, he realises there is something very “off” as his presence suddenly sets off an alarm and men in uniform approach him. I love this piece just on the basis of Kjetil’s blues-rock-influenced lead work that starts off haunting and rapidly soars in the first minute, grabbing your attention from the outset.
It returns midway, adding a sense of added unnerving urgency, and the closing lines, “It’s the same, but something has changed, These city scenes seem quite strange”, sum up the situation perfectly. Overall, it is a superb piece.
The melodic drive continues and holds the atmosphere of excitement, peril, and urgency with The Enemy Of My Enemy as the main character of this tale darts down a back lane into an old abandoned church, where he discovers from others hiding there that aliens have infiltrated and taken over everywhere.
The next piece, Semblance Of Sanity, looks at our hero and his new renegade friends and their method of outwitting the aliens who have microchipped the masses to keep track of their every movement and action. Their method is to carry a microchip with them and blend in and move about without actually becoming part of the “chipped herd”. This track is a punchy chugger, with a catchy repeat and up-tempo melodic swathes. I like this piece. It is powerful and upbeat. You can sense the mood of triumph as they outwit the aliens, but will it last?
The pace and mood elevate with This Engine Runs On Spite as the band of renegades move freely without suspicion and plot how to defeat the aliens. Repeating catchy chugging riffs meld with uplifting melodic swathes, and there is a midpoint leadwork burst. I love the sense of defiance that this piece oozes. It is a powerful listen.
On Betrayal, it seems that someone within their band has betrayed them to the aliens, and the potential punishment for the treason is execution of our band of renegades. I love the haunting opening riffs and the leadwork that soars out of it. There is something quite emotive about this piece, not just the apparent betrayal in the lyrics and the increasingly acidic slant on the vocals, but an aspect within the repeating riff that cannot fail to move you. It is such a great piece.
Our hero flees to an apparent sanctuary, but it is not all it seems as he has been followed by the aliens, and it looks like he has been set up to take the fall on Cathedral Gates. Can he escape, or is all lost?
I love the drive and urgency to this piece and the protraction on Rogga’s vocals builds on the intense and desperate atmosphere.
The first thing you notice with the next piece, 61 Cygni, is a slight shift in mood, atmosphere and to a certain extent the sound reflecting that mood. Kjetil drops in some spiralling, squealing lead work midway, and Rogga does a superb job with the vocals, employing two subtly different voices, impressively deep and otherworldly to better express the storyline.
As our hero is cornered by the aliens and unable to escape, he is keen to hear from their perspective why they are there and what their intentions are, possibly my favourite piece of the album.
Final piece, Astral Ascension takes on a more up-tempo drive alongside a very groove-rich repeat. Ultimately, this is not our hero’s place or time, and so he once again departs to another dimension and the endless possibilities it might entail.
Will we cross paths with him on future travels? Only time will tell.
Aside from the hugely engaging and listenable music of Echoes Of A Distant Future, the storyline is both fascinating and attention-grabbing, and left me with so many what-if questions on this intriguing sci-fi subject.
This is yet another superb offering from Furnace. Released via Emanzipation Productions on 29 May 2026, it will be available on CD and digital formats. For more details, visit frnc.bfan.link/echoes2.
Not all the changes Fires in the Distance display on Circadian Promise are quite so subtle. Those who’ve kept up with the band between releases surely know that vocalist Kristian Grimaldi was replaced by Brendan Hayter. Fans can debate the former front man’s significance relative to that of lead composer Yegor Savonin, but to my ears, Grimaldi’s absence is deeply felt. We’re squarely in the realm of subjective personal preference here, but Grimaldi’s baritone bark helped to ground the band’s sound in the style of early 2000s Gothic metal–think Finland’s Rapture and Italy’s Novembre–whereas Hayter’s Mikael Stanne-inspired high register delivery feels at odds with instrumentalists who do their best work on the low-end. Hayter also introduces some clean singing to the mix on Circadian Promise, and his performance is on time, in key and generally a worthwhile contribution to the band’s evolution as songwriters. But just as even really, ridiculously good-looking people need a distinctive beauty mark to truly catch our eye, I personally think Hayter could significantly benefit by adding a little ugly to his performance, rather than hewing safely to the middle ground. 
