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INCITE have released a new lyric video for “Chucked Off,” a track from their 2025 album Savage New Times, out through Reigning Phoenix Music. The video arrives during the band’s US tour supporting SOULFLY and NAILBOMB, with dates continuing through October 15. For vocalist Richie Cavalera, the song addresses a tendency to shift blame onto […]

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Kaonashi will be playing throughout, while Choke & Royal Tusk will split legs.

The post Protest The Hero Recruit Choke, Royal Tusk & Kaonashi For November Canadian Tour appeared first on Theprp.com.

Dreams are no longer just the soundtracks to sleep. Dreams are a disease, transmitted from sleeper to sleeper, gaining strength until it consumes the final victim entirely. Dreams are a sticky, tar-like affair. Dreams wait patiently; dreams can kill. We sleep and turn off the real world, but its reprieve offers no rest. Dreams dwell among the uncanny, the images of our loved ones or the places where we’ve felt safe, but nostalgia is in distant lands; this time, these figures are haunted: eyeless mothers and children with black spewing from their gaping mouths. These dream places and figments are just masks for some darkness lurking behind it – an inevitable malady. Sleep is not safe.

Capturing an audio darkness better than most, the woefully underrated Rorcal has created something new for each release: mammoth post-metal (Myrra, Mordvynn, Marayaa), suffocating sludge (Heliogabalus), fiery grind (Világvége), shuddering black metal (Creon), and sprawling industrial drone (Muladona). The Swiss collective has retained that shadow within them, however, making each iteration another vision of the void. In 2024’s Silence, we saw a more streamlined approach: a blackened hardcore backbone fleshed out by skin and muscle of drone and sludge. It was a tad disjointed, but its eerie approach to hardcore nabbed the second spot on my Albums o’ the Year. Mahre is three years in the making, toning down the drone and the hardcore for ritualistic doom and post-metal in a sonic exploration of dreams as disease. If unease is your drink of choice, Rorcal will be a dreamland.

Rorcal’s song construction has always been extremely calculated even among their already intricate contemporaries (Amenra, Bolt Gun, Fall of Efrafa), and this has made them all the more terrifying. Rorcal addresses the disjointed nature of Silence in Mahre while significantly toning down the hardcore influences, offering five movements to a common descent into a darker and darker ritual through meditative, suffocating sprawls and pulsing percussion. Focusing on atmosphere, the drone influence is likewise diminished in favor of dissonant atmospheres punctuated by punishing attacks. Each movement offers its own identity that colludes for a resounding payoff, from scathing, otherworldly dissonance and blackened blastbeats (Movement I & II), climactic sludge beatdowns recalling the late-and-unhinged Admiral Angry (III), ten-ton hammering sludge riffs (III), and chaotic derailing to reveal the capitalization of the descent into degradation (V).

Rorcal’s wherewithal to burn in calculated intensity or explode in unhinged mania is Mahre’s clearest asset. Its five-movement crescendo, while intensely planned, features plenty of breath across its tidy forty minutes, allowing these movements to crash and burn in natural deterioration. The evolution from movements I to V is not only the progression from ominous blackened dissonant atmospheres to crushing sludge weight, but also from calculation to mania. By movements IV and V, the rhythms start deteriorating, and the simmering viciousness begins to derail, and the sonic dream sickness feels more like succumbing. A descent guided by vocalist Yonni Chapatte’s manic barks and shrieks, the anchor that holds your sanity in place, the transitions from the sprawling creepy dissonance of the first two movements, the punishing centerpiece “Movement III,” to the conclusions when the rhythms start falling into disarray, are truly an experience to behold.

By the time “Movement V” closes, your mind will have been dragged to one of the darkest corners of the metalverse by one of the most premier acts to specialize in it. Mahre is remarkably clean compared to Rorcal’s catalog, toning down the drone and hardcore influences for a sound whose filth comes from placement of dissonance or sludge riffs and throat-shredding vocals – a potential point of contention among long-time fans. Recalling this year’s Aversio Humanitatis in its hypnotic dissonance and dreamlike rhythms, but second-to-none in its fusion with sludge and doom, Rorcal nevertheless remains one of the most prolific acts in extreme metal, each iteration feeling uniquely theirs despite wild stylistic differences. Their sixth full-length is pitch-black and unrelenting in ways that only its creators could do. The Swiss collective has created a dreamland that feels infected, contagious, and terrifying, and you’d be foolhardy to sleep on Mahre.

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Rating: 4.0/5.0
DR: 11 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Humus Records
Websites: rorcal.bandcamp.com | rorcal.com | facebook.com/Rorcal
Releases Worldwide: September 25th, 2026

The post Rorcal – Mahre Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

Popular progressive metal portal The ProgSpace is hosting an exclusive premiere from long-running California progressive metal icons Zero Hour; the instrumental version of the title track to the band’s new studio EP, No Man’s Land.

Zero Hour’s No Man’s Land sees this top-tier musical collective incredibly technical and dynamic prowess put on full display, as expected from. No Man’s Land features original members, guitarist Jasun Tipton and vocalist Erik Rosvold, joined by newer members, bassist Andreas Blomqvist and keyboardist Jeremy Villucci. Roel van Helden was acquired as a session drummer for this new chapter for Zero Hour.

No Man’s Land delivers two new songs, “Codes Of Violence and “No Man’s Land,” as well as instrumental versions of both tracks, marking another bold installment in the band’s catalog. Recorded by the band, with the drums recorded by Kai Stahlenberg at Kohlekeller Studio, the EP was mixed and mastered by Matt LaPlant at Madtown Mix Studio and completed with brilliant artwork by Wayne Joyner (Dream Theater, Ayreon, Devin Townsend).

Jasun Tipton reveals: “‘No Man’s Land’ was the first song I wrote for the release, with ‘Codes Of Violence’ following. I took a long break after writing the two songs, as the music from these tracks captured the landscape and outlook of the EP. The rhythm section of Roel and Andreas is just insane; they dazzle through each passage of the song. It gives the guitars room to breathe at moments, yet everything falls into place and it’s tight as nails. With the addition of Jeremy on the boards, it really brought the music over the top. There are many killer sequences keeping the listener interested. You’ll be gripping to hear what’s next in the listening experience.

Zero Hour will independently release No Man’s Land on CD and digitally through their own independent label, CynNormal Lab Recordings, on October 16th. Preorders can be placed here.

Originally formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in the ’90s by Jasun Tipton and his brother Troy, Zero Hour was formed to create heavy, melodic, dark, and intricate music with influences from diverse influences like the Dio-led years of Rainbow, The Pat Metheny Group, and Dream Theater. The band released six studio albums from 1998 to 2008. The first two – Zero Hour (1998) and The Towers Of Avarice (2001) were self-released, while the next four – Metamorphosis (2003), A Fragile Mind (2005), Specs Of Pictures Burnt Beyond (2006), and Dark Deceiver (2008) – were all released under the Sensory Records of the vast The Laser’s Edge Group.

Zero Hour dissolved after the release of Dark Deceiver, when Troy Tipton suffered an arm injury that prevented him from playing bass. After Jasun Tipton and vocalist Erik Rosvold reunited the group, they recruited drummer Roel van Helden. The two became friends when Roel’s group at the time, Sun Caged, and Zero Hour played a gig as direct support for Liquid Tension Experiment. They stayed in contact, and years later, they reconnected overseas and chatted about making music together. Van Helden was then instrumental in bringing Andreas Blomqvist into the lineup, having known him in his prior band, Seventh Wonder. This lineup would then construct the return album, Agenda 21, released through Frontiers Records in 2022, and now, arrives with the immersive No Man’s Land, opening the next chapter of Zero Hour’s ongoing saga.

The post ZERO HOUR & The ProgSpace Premieres Track From Upcoming EP “No Man’s Land” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

RAM have released “Abattoir,” the latest single from Against, their first full-length in nearly seven years. The album arrives on October 9, 2026, through Metal Blade Records, with a Gothenburg release show that will also mark bassist Tobias “Tobbe” Petterson’s final performance with the band. Vocalist Oscar Carlquist places the new song firmly at the […]

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This is the eleventh album from German progressive metal band The Ocean. After 2023’s Holocene, The Ocean have returned a changed band, with a new drummer, two new guitarists, and two new vocalists. Bringing us 72 minutes of new material, Solaris is big, bold, and vast in scale and ambition. Despite the significant lineup change, … Continue reading “The Ocean – Solaris (Review)”

Index’s raucous debut album Vis Inertiae arrives this Friday. The experimental hardcore duo has shared “Cellophane,” “Fractured,” and “Earth” so far, and now they’re back with “Dissolve.”

The post Index – “Dissolve” appeared first on Stereogum.

Let tracks from the White Stripes, Madonna, Beyoncé and more transport you to the classroom.

UK power metal six-piece Dragonforce have announced their first album with new singers Alissa-White Gluz and Alessio Garavello and unveiled its lead single.

The new song, Hunger Of The Beast, is out now with a music video and precedes the release of their self-titled 10th album on March 19 via Napalm. The video can be seen below and preorders are now live.

Hunger… is the first song with Garavello, who replaced longtime singer Marc Hudson last week, following the announcement that Hudson had stepped away from touring and recording due to his struggles with the hearing condition tinnitus.

It’s their second song overall with White-Gluz, following an alternative version of 2024 track Burning Heart where she handled guest vocals, and the first since she became a full-time member earlier this year.

White-Gluz comments: “I have loved the entire process of making music with Dragonforce. It’s great to connect with such elite musicians and work together to really bring out the best of our respective styles. I think this new combo of speed and ferocity is refreshing and exciting. It’s going to be so much fun to perform live.”

Guitarist and co-founder Herman Li adds: “Every time we begin making another album, we just think, ‘Wow – I can’t believe we’re still doing what we love after all these years.’ The approach of the 10th album is as important as the first one, or any of the albums, because the way we look at music is we’re making a piece of art that’s going to be frozen in time.

“We always try to use everything we’ve learned from our years of experience, and put that into the new music. This is unlike any Dragonforce album you’ve ever heard, and unlike any metal albums out there. There’s just nothing like it, and everyone listening will realise that straight away. We’re not trying to be commercial. We’re not trying to be popular. We’re not trying to be famous. We make music because we want to make something that we love to hear and elevate our musicianship to the next level.”

White-Gluz, who left her longtime band Arch Enemy last November and also fronts the metal trio Blue Medusa, joined Dragonforce in May. The plan was for her and Hudson to be co-vocalists, but then, ahead of the new lineup’s debut shows at US festivals Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple in May, Hudson dropped out due to his hearing issues.

Dragonforce will return to the road in November, when they kick off a North American tour celebrating 20 years of their third album, Inhuman Rampage. The album contained their breakthrough single Through The Fire And Flames, which won the band many new fans when it appeared on hit videogame Guitar Hero III. Get tickets via their website.

DRAGONFORCE have introduced their new vocal partnership with “Hunger of the Beast,” the first single from their forthcoming self-titled tenth album. Featuring Alissa White-Gluz and Alessio Garavello on lead vocals, DragonForce will be released on March 19, 2027, via Napalm Records. The song was written specifically around the two singers’ ranges, placing their contrasting abilities […]

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