This year, Cynic celebrated the 30th anniversary of their landmark debut album. Interstellar shredder Paul Masvidal and his band of aliens played ‘Focus’ in all its mind-bending intensity, while also paying tribute to late drummer Sean Reinert and bassist Sean Malone, on a special headlining tour of North America.
Autarkh already sounded like the future on their debut. But the Dutch contemporary metal band have pushed their distended view of the digital age to further extremes on their new album.
‘Cursed Mortality’ isn’t a revival. It’s a bold step into the future for one of the most brutally innovative bands in all of death metal.
EXOCRINE have blending ultra technical and extraordinarily rapid death metal with philosophical musings for quite some time now. The French band released their first album back in 2015. But their new album marks a new chapter. While still choked-full of eerie, dissonant finger-taps and enough blast beats to blow out your eardrums, ‘Legend’ rages from within.
Wrath of Logarius come crawling out from the misty forests of Northern California. In their wake, fans a dark, flaming and eerily melodic new subgenre: Formless Black Metal.
STRIGOI were already plenty unsettling on their debut album. After all, this band includes current and former members of Paradise Lose, Extreme Noise Terror, Satyricon and Carcass. But the UK death-doom band’s follow-up pushed their grinding asphyxiations to such vile extremes, that it produced an abundance of putridity.
Horrendous just put out one of the best albums of the year according to Metal Sucks, Metal Injection and Decibel.
HEILUNG don’t play shows. They perform a ritual. Every performance begins with Kai Uwe Faust leading Christopher Juul, Maria Franz and their ritual collective in an ancient prayer. Soon after, the audience is swept into rapture, swayed by incense and throat singing, primordial rhythms, subtle electronic textures, a mesmerizing light show, an army of warriors and bursts of fire; a ritual.
Icelandic black metal ensemble HELFRÓ are back with their sophomore album Tálgröf – a project inspired by the dark manifestations of the human mind. The sickness of humankind is explored through intense rhythmic passages, fusing the extremities of traditional death metal together with sombre, introspective lyrical convictions.
After coming together over frustrations with the pandemic, Black Lava boiled to a nicely charred head on their debut album. Despite surfacing toward the end of 2022, ‘Soul Furnace’ burned with such fury that Distorted Sound dubbed it a contender for album of the year. The blackened riffs spilled all the way to #2 on Australia’s Independent Albums chart, while Dan Presland’s heavy grooves and blast beats melted away Sick Drummer.
A vast exploration of sonic textures present themselves on HELGA’s premier album ‘Wrapped in Mist’, as chugging riffs, spectral strings and imposing drums converge into one.
Black Orchid Empire have had quite the year. The prog-metal band released their first album for Season of Mist back in the spring to critical acclaim. With ‘Tempus Veritas’, Distorted Sound declared that BOE “set the new standard for prog rock”.
Season of Mist is proud to welcome Kingcrow to the family!
ON THORNS I LAY deliver more of their legendary death-doom on their first album for Season of Mist. With chugging riffs, ear-shattering wails of terror and eerily melodic funeral passages, their new self-titled LP is bound to crush your spirit.
BASK have taken us on quite a long, strange and headbanging trip. Ten years ago, the band came thundering down from the mountains of North Carolina with their debut album. ‘American Hollow’ cast their pastoral landscapes in in country-twinged doom, but on the next two albums, the hearty four-piece painted with a headier and heavier brush.
Strigoi were already plenty unsettling on their debut album. But the UK death-doom band’s follow-up pushed their grinding asphyxiations to such vile extremes, that it produced an abundance of putridity.
Alkaloid contain more than just multitudes. Their new album ‘Numen’ compresses meteoric riffs, seductive flurries of jazz and flamenco, and a multi-part saga about a godlike galactic civilization into a dizzying, thrilling 70 minutes.
Icelandic black metal ensemble HELFRÓ are back with their sophomore project Tálgröf – A project inspired by the dark manifestations of the human mind. The sickness of humankind is explored through intense rhythmic passages, fusing the extremities of traditional death metal together with sombre, introspective lyrical convictions.
IMPURE WILHELMINA are no strangers to reinvention. For the past 25 years, the Geneva quartet have rolled hardcore riffs, velveteen cleans, atmospheric sludge and gloomy melodies into post-metal that’s as sharp and versatile as a Swiss Army Knife.
Autarkh venture into a bigger, brighter and more uplifting headspace on their new album. On the first two singles off Emergent, the Dutch contemporary metal band tapped in to supercharged industrial-sized riffs and even clean, radiant harmonies. But their new single “Duhkha” finds them struggling to hold onto that serene state of mind.