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Sydney trio The Veil ave released their long-awaited new album, Departures.

Available on Bandcamp with physical versions at selected retailers soon, Departures marks the first recording from the band for 12 years.

Iceland’s black metal scene has earned its reputation not through volume alone but through a genuine conviction that is difficult to manufacture. Misþyrming, Svartidauði, Sinmara – these are bands that operate with an almost liturgical seriousness, and they’ve made Iceland the most vital proving ground in contemporary black metal. Forsmán, out of Kópavogur, are the newest names to enter that lineage. Their debut full-length, Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur, doesn’t ease its way into that conversation. It kicks the door down.

The band’s only prior release, the 2021 EP Dönsum í logans ljóma, signaled something formidable in development – raw, atmospheric, rooted in the same devotional darkness that runs through the veins of the Icelandic underground. What Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur makes clear is that the intervening years were not idle. The four members – all in their early twenties – have delivered a debut that sounds less like a band finding its footing and more like one that has already arrived, knowing exactly where it is going.

The album’s title suggests a conceptual framework – Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur translates roughly to “Burned Ruins & Raging Shores” – and the tracklist sustains that sense of scorched and turbulent geography. But the narrative remains deliberately, perhaps productively, opaque. This is not a record that hands you a key. If there is a through-line, it lives in atmosphere and emotional register rather than explicit storytelling: urgency, rage, desperation, and something approaching a kind of feral spiritual crisis.

What the production achieves – and the album’s cover artwork by Paolo Girardi (Power Trip, Sulphur Aeon) signals this before a single note plays – is a sense of density that never collapses into murk. The guitars carry down-tuned weight while retaining enough definition to track the intricate riffwork underneath. The rhythm section drives without dominating. The vocals, split between death-growl and shrieked registers, sit in the mix like a second instrument rather than an afterthought. For a debut full-length, the sonic cohesion is striking.

Opener “Drottinn Fyrirgefur Allt” – one of two pre-release singles – establishes the template with severity and no preamble: malevolent riffing, shifting dynamics that suggest something almost compositional beneath the surface violence, and an atmosphere that feels less performed than inhabited. “Svartir Svanir” follows and sustains it. Together, these two tracks function as a battering ram – not because they are sonically identical, but because they build cumulative pressure in a way that makes the subsequent exhale feel necessary and earned.

That exhale comes with “Valdníðsla.” The tempo drops, the soundscape becomes suffocating in a different way – not the forward-motion assault of the opener pair, but something closer to submersion. It’s the drowning track, the moment before the vortex pulls you back under. Forsmán understand pacing well enough to know that the most disorienting thing you can do mid-record isn’t accelerate – it’s decelerate, and make the listener sit with something they can’t escape. “Kynjamyndir” then does something unexpected: it pulls toward the mid-tempo, toward something that approaches, if not quite accessibility, then at least a kind of rhythm that a listener can orient themselves by. It is the one moment on the album where the seething eases enough to let you catch your breath – before the remaining tracks close that gap entirely.

The reference points that come to mind – Horna’s devotional rawness, Acherontas’ ritualistic menace – are accurate as far as they go, but Forsmán aren’t simply working from those templates. The Misþyrming influence is real and visible in the forward-driving momentum, the refusal to let atmosphere become a substitute for compositional clarity. What distinguishes Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur is the neurotic quality underneath it – a manic, unpredictable volatility that makes the record feel genuinely destabilizing rather than merely abrasive.

This is not a record you manage. It manages you. There are stretches of Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur that operate less like music than like a substance working through your system – disorienting, pulling at the edges of control, demanding something you didn’t consciously agree to give. That is not an easy thing to achieve, and most bands that attempt it produce only discomfort rather than the particular intoxication that Forsmán sustain across eight tracks. The distinction matters.

Forsmán have not simply introduced themselves – they’ve staked a claim. Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur is primal and precise in equal measure, and on this evidence, they belong exactly where Iceland’s black metal underground has placed them.

Forsmán are exactly as dangerous as Iceland’s underground suggested they would be.

The post Iceland’s Next Voice: FORSMÁN Arrive with `Brenndar Rústir & Fuðrandi Fjörur` – Album Review appeared first on Antihero Magazine.

Known for their signature blend of atmospheric heaviness and classical violin, Swedish band Imminence begin a major new chapter with their signing to Sumerian Records and the release of their new single, The Sword That Never Bends. Following the global breakthrough success of their latest album, The Black, the band now enters a new era […]

The internet is finally proving to be worthwhile

Claire Hamill 2026 Shedding the silence she used to wear like a shield, Hastings’ most mellifluous inhabitant hunts for fresh tunes en plein air. When she started out, at seventeen, Claire Hamill was a little precious thing; today, as a … Continue reading →

The post CLAIRE HAMILL BAND – A House Among The Trees appeared first on DMME.net.

Smoking .

The post Smoking Snakes share video for new track “Trick or Treat” first appeared on Sleaze Roxx.

The organisers of Froth and Fury have made the decision to withdraw from Perth in 2027.

In a statement, the promoters praise the success of this year’s event but note that increasing costs will prohibit them attempting it next year.

“While the Perth event itself was amazing and everyone there had an incredible day, we simply did not reach the turnout numbers required to make the event viable for us moving forward,” reads the statement in part.

Happily, Froth and Fury is planned to go ahead in Adelaide once again, with January 30 announced as the date. Artist submissions will likely begin in October. Keep up to date via the festival website.

Michigan metalcore powerhouse I Prevail is about to tear across the country for their Violent Nature Australian Tour, marking the largest headline arena run of their career Down Under. Teaming up with progressive metalcore heavyweights Imminence and Invent Animate, the June 2026 trek commands major stages across Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney. This tour […]

I love a good title. Not those rage-triggering, click-bait things you see on social media, but a well-conceived summary of what the article is about. Or the rare occasion when judging a book by its cover is justified. That’s just what you get from LA singer-songwriter David Serby’s latest album, Broken Heart in a Honky […]

Scar .

The post Scar Chamber featuring Babylon A.D. guitarist Ron Freschi drop video for debut single “Ugly On The Inside” first appeared on Sleaze Roxx.