Crown Magnetar – The Hollowing Of Godflesh (Unique Leader Records) [Spike]
When this landed on the desk tagged as “brutal deathcore,” it didn’t take long to realize it does exactly what it says on the tin. Bands love attaching sprawling, hyphenated labels to their sound, but here it’s completely accurate. This is a lethal mash-up of brutal death metal, blistering technical death metal, and modern deathcore weight. If you’ve got those ingredients in the pot and you know what you’re doing with them, the results are going to hit like a freight train.
Clocking in at a tight twenty-nine minutes,
The Hollowing Of Godflesh has one massive advantage right out of the gate: zero filler. Too many bands in the modern heavy sphere feel the need to pad their albums out with ambient fluff or drawn-out interludes that kill momentum. Crown Magnetar don’t bother with any of that nonsense. It’s an unbroken half-hour sprint of pure technical precision and unvarnished savagery.
The record opens with
Gun Eater, which acts like a tense, creeping fuse before
Desecrate Infinite completely detonates. The sheer velocity is breathtaking. Byron London’s drumming is practically superhuman, shifting between rapid-fire blast beats and bone-snapping half-time shifts without missing a single beat. Dan Tucker delivers the kind of throat-shredding performance that makes your own vocal cords ache in sympathy, bouncing effortlessly between cavernous lows and piercing shrieks.
What keeps this from turning into a blurry wall of unreadable noise is the technical craft behind the guitars. New recruit Rob Maramonte weaves in intricate, angular riffs that nod towards technical death metal stalwarts like Defeated Sanity and Suffocation, but he never lets the guitar gymnastics distract from the physical groove. Tracks like
Domination and
Impaled Genesis are anchored by massive, tectonic riffs that give the technical flash real, room-clearing weight.
The title track,
The Hollowing Of Godflesh, is an absolute masterclass in pacing. It charges forward with dizzying speed before pulling the rug out from under you with an abrupt, neck-snapping breakdown. That live-wire energy carries straight into
Godkiller, which feels purpose-built to turn a venue floor into an absolute war zone with its nasty tempo drops.
Down the back stretch, they keep their foot welded firmly to the floor.
Shut Up And Bleed and
Torture Engine deliver relentless, teeth-grinding brutality, while
Sculptures Of Suffering brings in extra vocal venom to trade off with Tucker before the crushing finale of
Dead Crown drags you over the finish line.
The Hollowing Of Godflesh doesn’t pretend to be anything other than a ruthless, surgical beating. It’s concise, relentless, and played with jaw-dropping skill. If you want heavy music that strips away the radio-friendly posturing and just delivers raw devastation, this is an essential listen.
9/10Early Moods – Ready For The Grave (RidingEasy Records) [Rich Piva]Early Moods album number three is here and this guy is certainly happy. The Sabbath/proto loving Los Angeles band bring more riffs and evil on
Ready For The Grave, but also sound like they are straight off one of those NWOBHM comps that we all love.
The title track is straight up NWOBHM worship. Like something Metallica would have covered on
Garage Days when they were still cool, and by the way it is awesome. The middle part breaks down like Sabbath, but the first part is more Diamond Head than anything else. I am certainly not complaining.
Inquisition gets back to the doomier side of the band, slowing it down and getting all black mass on our asses. Dig it. I love when the pace picks up and the back up vocals are included. I can’t help but to hear early Metallica vibes on this record. Not because they thrash it up, but more on how it sounds like something Lars would have tape traded for back in the day. Like Thy Eternal Grief, with the acoustic opening leading to the dual guitar attack. I mean they have a (killer) song called The Prowler too! It also happens to be one of Alberto Alcaraz’s best vocal performances till date.
You want chunky doom with great guitar work? Fine, I present to you When Light Fades in all of its glory. But wait! That middle part! This is their metal ballad, and it works great. Her Wicked Spells is trademarked Early Moods; mid-tempo, doomy riffs, with a couple temp changes and cool vocals. The epic Ashes Of The Damned is their final quest. This is a big and sprawling proto doom track that ends the record nicely.
We are not breaking new ground with Ready For The Grave, but Early Moods brings us something new from them that is as enjoyable as their best work and a worthy addition to their discography. This record sounds great, the playing is a step up for them, and so is the songwriting. Another solid effort from a very cool band. 8/10
Nail By Nail – Internal Inferno (War Anthem Records) [Joe Guatieri]
Nail By Nail are a Black Metal band from Germany, only forming a few year ago in 2023. Since then they quickly put out their debut album, Embraced By Darkness in 2025. An album which was received positively by critics and metal fans alike. Now only a year later in 2026, they’re putting out their second full-length with Internal Inferno. I went into this completely blind, only to see the light again…
Getting into the LP with track two, Katharsis, it brings emotional depth in every sense of the word. Starting with a soft introduction with a lone guitar that feels like the wind blowing on a dark cold night, only to be awakened by an explosion 40 seconds in.
It feels like the end already with what I can only describe as an epic riff which feels miraculous, it’s like you’ve just survived a near-death experience and are crawling away from it. The vocals are howled with such venom as the rhythm section pounds away until the blasting sets course on its intended target by 2:42.
The bass playing is especially breathtaking, Emmanuel puts his entire being into it, hitting those low notes like he’s carving into stone. Katharsis is beautiful and is no doubt my favourite song on the album. It stars Internal Inferno with its best foot forward which I find strange to comprehend with as it sounds so final, you can either go fall down a hole after this or ascend into heaven, there is no in-between.
I can’t really describe the rest of the record without repeating myself again and again, that goes the same with a lot of Black Metal for me. The difference here with what Nail By Nail has done here is that they’ve kept me engaged throughout despite similarities between tracks. I enjoy the way that the experience washes over my person, I could quite easily close my eyes and be drifted away into a different world by listening to this.
There is a certain type of melancholy here which I don’t get with a lot of music in this sphere, it makes me want to dig deeper. There is a force there which isn’t pushing you away or sitting alone, it needs to carry on and it doesn’t know how too. I would describe this feeling as suffering in public, it’s got no other choice.
Overall, Nail By Nail have wowed me not by scaring me which is what I usually look for with Black Metal, instead they’ve put me into a meditative which is the last thing that I expected. They take a lot of influence from Oathbreaker and channel attack into comprehending one’s place in the world. Nail By Nail have definitely made a fan out of me with Internal Inferno, it’s an opera of the mind. 8/10
Remote Viewing – State Violence (Human Worth) [Mateusz Stefanow]
I’ve always had a soft spot for 80s slasher films, and this album indescribably gives me that exact vibe. The album cover contrasts between the dark outside and the steamy amber of the inside of the car foreshadow the astonishing smoothness of the tracks within.
#makemoneymakelovemakemoney is quintessential sludge metal, it’s thematically dark, groovy and the John Atkins’ bass is clear in the mix. Maybe I’m being placebo-effected by the title, but the spoken word section brings to mind powerviolence influences, which adds to the gritty atmosphere that we are being encompassed in. As we fade out of the first track, we effortlessly crossfade into Retrain As A Swan, Tom Fowler and James Bryant enchanting us with exquisite duo guitarwork as John Breslin rhythmically paves the way via his percussive skills.
Remote Viewing personally don’t Disrespect The Arts – crushing riffs that flow and ebb and are certain to please the ears of wandering Electric Wizard fans, and those Warning fans that desire some less emotions in their sludge. Ever heard a violin in a sludge metal song? If not, Human Right$ is a must-hear track. Far from a pseudo-artsy addition, this 4 stringed instrument blends seamlessly with the mournful vocals and guitars to nail home the weight of this albums message,
Birds Of A Feather Is On In 7 Minutes must be the most non-blatantly politically charged song ever- purely melodic, it builds in volume and intensity up to a crescendo, that peak of the wave before… fading, and fizzling out- just like our interest in the horrors of the social injustices around the world.
The album veers away from Remote Viewing’s older song-naming conventions, focusing more on the socio-political corruption present in our societies, as bassist Atkins eloquently put it ‘the world is currently a veritable shit show of epic proportions’. Be that as it may, but this album is most assuredly not partaking in that shitshow, for it is like floating down a river of basslines, pulled by the riff undercurrents, no paddling required, just the drums and vocals to guide you along. 7/10
