Quarterly Review: Spidergawd, Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin, Hawk vs. Dove, Silver Orbs, Xain, Iron Void & Orodruin, Epimetheus, Wolftooth, Babona, Motsus
Posted in Reviews on March 17th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Day one down, time for day two of this Spring 2026 Quarterly Review. If you missed me saying so yesterday, this QR will run 70 releases total, so it finishes a week from today. If you didn’t find anything you got down with yesterday, I hope today’s your day. If not, maybe tomorrow. That’s kind of how this works.
You should note that some of this is 2025 releases. I’ll try to note that in the reviews when I can, but today leads off with Spidergawd’s latest and that’s six months old at this point. The older I get, the less of a shit I give for release dates. That’s a somewhat aspirational statement, I admit. I’ve always sucked at keeping up.
Quarterly Review #11-20:
Spidergawd, From Eight to Infinity
Reconfirming their place among top tier songwriters in heavy rock, Norway’s Spidergawd offer their eighth album with Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest and way more energy behind the delivery than ‘eighth album’ could ever hope to imply. From Eight to Eternity indeed is an eighth album running eight tracks (40 minutes; that’s eight times five, anyhow), and while charge is part of what they do, they’ve always been able to hone a sense of dynamic across a record and the latest is no different. As the world outside crumbles, Spidergawd offer escape to a better place and unshakable solidity of approach. Even the extra-vehemence of chug in “Confirmation” and the proto-thrashy twists in “200 Miles High” are brought into the fold rather than left to hang as anomalous, and there’s a gallop in “The Hunter” that’s pure NWOBHM, but Spidergawd remain a rock band even when they’re playing metal, which “The Ghost of Eirik Raude” says better than I could, and in “The Grand Slam,” the grander outreach of “Winter Song” and the shove of “One in a Million” they once more underscore how special the thing they do is. Do you understand what a gift Spidergawd are to heavy rock and roll? You might if you listen.
Crispin Glover Records website
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Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin, Misty Woman
Originally issued through Nasoni Records in 2020, Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin‘s Misty Woman arrives via a Dec. 2025 Black Throne Productions reissue, and reasonably so. In the parlance of our times, it’s a vibe. The title-track is spacious and ’60s psych, with choice vocals and easy swing, and by then they’ve already been through the volatility of the jam in “Which One is the Jellyfish” and the plus-sized roll in “Kennel and the Dog,” so they’re well underway, with rawness and atmosphere both as part of their crux. That doesn’t abate in the two-part “Rider in the Desert Sun” or the hypnotic diversion “In the Valley,” willfully repetitive across its five minutes ahead of the longest track “There’s No Saving Cass,” which uses the negative space of the mix for a live feel before hitting into a classic-style fadeout into the interlude “Grains of Sand.” The closer “Black and Blue” is fuller in sound, but still echoing out, and the bonus track “Magic Touch” brings extra brightness to the crash and a satisfying swell of rawer distortion to its finish. Sleeper, maybe, because it’s already six years old, but with scope, and well earns the second look.
Aunt Cynthia’s Cabin on Bandcamp
Black Throne Productions website
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Hawk vs. Dove, The Weight of All Matters
The Dallas outfit have said that “The Weight of All Matters” is a herald of their third record, but as it’s been more than 10 years since the band released their second album, 2015’s Divided States (review here), it seemed reasonable to approach the six-minute newcomer as a standalone, at least for the time being. The new song is perhaps more patient for the years between — though I wouldn’t presume to imply that to an entire album; they’ve always been able to change it up amid various 1990s influences, here grunge, there noise, filtered through their own tonal heft and melodic sensibility, the latter of which is a crucial factor in “The Weight of All Matters” as well, lending a progressive feel to the chorus and the brash swell in the second half. More likely than not, the single doesn’t speak for the entirety of the full-length to come, but it’s good to hear from Hawk vs. Dove again at all. They make it easy to look forward to more.
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Silver Orbs, Silver Orbs
There are six dudes in Brisbane fuzz-psych rockers Silver Orbs and four of them sing, so yes, part of the impression the band’s late-’25 three-songer self-titled debut EP makes is in the vocals, particularly in opener “Manganangas,” but “Gannets” brings a more serene start with intertwining keyboard and guitar, though the rumble of bass and steady kick drum herald the volume kick that arrives soon enough, and “Gannets” is instrumental, so clearly sending a message that they’re not one-sided in their approach. “Kanto Katso” affirms this with a strikingly heavy intro of crashes and guitar attack, but its verses are more like psychedelic chants and the drums shift to the toms there, so they’re having fun making it weird, and that’s as it should be. I don’t know if “Kanto Katso” doesn’t return to that same directness of impact from its start or if one just acclimates to it, but a band setting such a vivid context for their own sound across the first three songs they’ve ever released isn’t something that happens every day, and Silver Orbs come across as ready to continue exploring. A thing to hope for.
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Xain, Xaraba
Azerbaijani duo Xain unfurl a bit over six minutes of heavy post-grind extremity on Xaraba, the three included tracks pummeling one after another in succession, with perhaps the most brutal crush of all coming in centerpiece “Günahkar” where the overarching rush groove opens to a breakdown start-stop nod that speaks to their noted The Dilligner Escape Plan influence, but the shove and the context are all their own. I’m not sure if it’s live drums or not, as vocalist Toghrul Manafov and guitarist Elkhan Alshin (both founding members of death metallers Fatal Nation), but the toy piano offset in “Çürüyən ruhun ət qəfəsi” speaks to outside-genre impulses that can only continue to serve them well as they do here, and as unforgiving and unbridled as they are, the catharsis comes through strongly despite the language barrier. They should probably get a government grant to make more of this.
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Iron Void & Orodruin, Altar of Worship
The ‘altar’ in question for Altar of Worship is Pagan Altar, and two of doom metal’s most doomed — Wakefield, UK’s Iron Void and NY’s Orodruin — give due homage to Terry Jones (R.I.P. 2015) and the classic sound he had a hand in developing as part of the band (who are still going, mind you). Each band offers one studio-tracked original — Iron Void lead off side A with “The Tolling Bell” (also the longest track; immediate points) and Orodruin answer back with “In This Place” at the start of side B — as well as a Pagan Altar cover and two live songs. Orodruin‘s take on “In the Wake of Armadeus” is a highlight, but so is Iron Void‘s “Highway Cavalier,” and it quickly becomes fortunate that the two bands aren’t so much in competition with each other — lest you had to pick one over the other — as they are working together remotely toward a common goal in celebrating one of doom’s many underheralded legends. It’s a tribute that wears its (dark, grim, sorrowful) heart on its sleeve.
Nameless Grave Records website
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Epimetheus, Perseus 9
Lead cut “Earthbound” gets pretty chunky toward its finish, but as Epimetheus roll on to pursue Conan-esque levels of heavy in “Coalesce” and bring “Drift Beyond” to a rumblenoise apex that the likes of Cities of Mars or Domkraft might proffer, the UK-based outfit know there’s more than one way to crush a skull. They are atmospheric without overproduction, and’90s rooted without sounding like either grunge, stoner rock, doom and meditative psychedelia directly while having aspects of all of them, and are dug into their own processes enough that the promo for the seven-song/48-minute Perseus 9 came with a document detailing the building and modding of their instruments, pedals and recording apparatus. If you think I’m complaining about that, you’re wrong. The care they put into crafting their sound can be heard in the centerpiece “Held No More,” which effectively summarizes the scope across nearly 10 minutes before the eight-minute title-track follows up with more cosmic chug and nod. “Calling” is duly feedback-coated for the shouts that complement its riff, and they close with the uptempo “Terraform” presumably so they can begin to repair the damage they caused all along their way. Perseus 9 is their debut, and there are things to be sorted in terms of their approach, but the potential here is no less broad than their creative reach. Heads up, this one’s a journey.
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Wolftooth, Wizard’s Light
A well established penchant for the epic serves Indiana capital-‘h’ Heavy metal rockers Wolftooth on their fourth album and first for Ripple Music, Wizard’s Light, as they bring a strident NWOBHM feel to “Darkened Path,” “Sands of Redemption,” “Armor of Steel,” “Bloodline” and others throughout the 45-minute 10-track collection, but as sweeping and grand as even a rocker like “Wizard’s Light” ends up being, Wolftooth are never actually overblown. The longest inclusion here is the penultimate “Bloodline,” and it’s a ripper very much on-brand for the record and the band making it, but it’s also only five and a half minutes long. So while Wolftooth come on in grand fashion with the intro “Hymn of Belgarath” carrying into the hard snare and galloping chug of “Sightless Archer,” they never rest in one place long enough to lose the urgency of what they’re doing in sacrifice either to precision or class, though they offer no shortage of either of those. It’s not my thing, necessarily, but I’m just one person and the appeal here might as well be scored into the side of a mountain.
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Babona, Az Átkozott
Translated as ‘the cursed’ from the original Hungarian, Babona‘s Az Átkozott is the short third full-length from the Miskolc-based solo-project of multi-instrumentalist Tamás Rózsa, and the prolific craftsman adds percussive nuance to “Soha” and goes out to the car in “Mahnurk,” seeming to tell a story complete with giggles and a big inhalation before “Csapágy” kicks in with a mellower intro ahead of the record’s most active pummel. From opener “Álomra hajtom a fejemet” onward, the mood is prevailingly dark, and the cawing crows of “ÍmeaT átka” (a second interlude) only reinforce the feeling. Still, even the start-stop ’90s crunch riffing of “Visszatérés” and the back and forth mellow/shove trades in “A szigetmonostori búcsú” harness a feeling of movement, and at maybe 25 minutes, Az Átkozott is a long way from the danger of overstaying its welcome. This is an exploration worth following if you’re not yet.
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Motsus, Atlas
Belgian instrumentalists Motsus lean into riffy post-metal in a way that’s invariably going to lead to Pelican or Russian Circles comparisons on Atlas, but the push in “Driver,” which hits subsequent to “Intro (El Toro de Fuego)” at the album’s outset, isn’t shy about its underlying stonerism, and both “Duna” and “Exploder Pt. II” back this idea with plotted longform processions, the former rising from its Middle Eastern-style intro into a massive lumber while the latter climbs the cliff just to jump off and enjoy the downward tumble. They thrash for a bit in the two-minute “Short Notice,” but it’s in closer “Turboslak” that they pull all the sides together and find their very-loud-no-matter-what-volume-you’re-listening-at niche in the sphere, setting a low barrier to entry for the genre converted without playing so much to style as to lose sight of the ideals they’re chasing as they execute for such marked weight.
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