Feel like we’re really getting into it now, and that’s a good thing. I’m not saying I was shaking off rust for the first two days, but I look at the spread of styles across the names above and ‘it’s gonna be a good day’ pops inexorably into my head. I like that feeling, which I guess is how we get here in the first place.

It’s Wednesday of this seven-day QR, so we’re not quite halfway through yet. If you’ve been keeping up, thank you. If not, it’s okay. You’re still welcome to peruse the below and hopefully find something that speaks to you.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Clayton Burgess, If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now

Self-recorded and just as raw as the day is long, the first solo album from Clayton Burgess (Satan’s Satyrs founder, also ex-Electric Wizard), If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, is so classic in its substance it can’t help be modern. And I’m not talking about the pop garage indie of the 2000s, like it sounds cheap but also everybody has perfect hair. Songs like “Kerosene” and the Mellotron-laced “Meadowlands” are more in the Rise Above Records mindset of retroism, which is to say doing the thing for real and letting the genres sort themselves out later. Thus the proto-punk of “Little Bat Dreams” and the strut of “Scenic Byway” coexist with the jazzy “Faustine,” and so on. “Signal Fire” and the closer “Golden Age of Volcanism” are a bit darker, maybe a little closer to Burgess‘ work with Satan’s Satyrs, while “Greasy Bangs” lives up to its name for all of its 90 seconds, a heavy garage instrumental of the ’60s tradition. What’s amazing about it is the whole style is based around familiarity and yet the indentity built up throughout is so individual. I haven’t seen a lot of hype about it, but here’s hoping Burgess continues this pursuit.

Clayton Burgess on Bandcamp

Satan’s Satyrs on Bandcamp

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New Mexican Doom Cult, Ziggurat

There have been some personnel shifts in Swedish stoner-doomnodders New Mexican Doom Cult, and their second full-length, Ziggurat, operates mostly in the same volume-worshipping vein of riffing as 2023’s Necropolis (review here), but with a deeper perspective in “Metatron” and the pointedly doomed “Return to Babylon,” among others. The band now is Nils Ahnland on guitar and vocals (also bass), drummer Jonathan Ekvall and Jonas Strömberg on keys/production, and though they’ve given up some tonal impact as a result of dropping to a single guitar (layering notwithstanding; looking at you, “Criosphinx”), the tradeoff is they’re more flexible in sound while remaining plenty heavy from “The Church of Starry Wisdom” onward. Sabbathian roll is a specialty of the house, but the satisfaction when “Sungod” finally kicks in at full volume speaks to a different kind of mastery before the doom-hook in “I Stand Alone” rounds out. Curious where they’ll go from here.

New Mexican Doom Cult on Bandcamp

New Mexican Doom Cult on Instagram

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Lammping/Drew Smith/Marker Starling, Risky

Following on from 2025’s Never Never (review here), Toronto mellow-hangs specialists Lammping continue their four-album cycle of collaborations with this second one, bringing them together with Drew Smith (The Bicycles) and Chris Cummings (Marker Starling), as core Lammping duo Mikhail Galkin (vocals, production, guitar, etc.) and Jay Anderson (drums) slide so smoothly into and out of dub instrumentals and low-key heavy vibes, always fluid, here hinting toward jazz, there shimmering into the techno experiment “Prelude to Never” ahead of the finale “Never Done,” which closes like psychedelic singer-songwriter fare from some lost decade that was never actually real. I guess the update is Lammping remain on their on wavelength of sound and on their own echelon of cool. Spending some time there with them could only be to your greater benefit. Two more LPs coming.

Lammping on Bandcamp

We Are Busy Bodies on Bandcamp

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Mos Eisley Spaceport, Live on Crow Hill

Most of the material on Mos Eisley Spaceport‘s apparently-self-released live album, Live on Crow Hill, comes from their 2023 debut, Further, but with newer two songs at the end in the 12-minute “Interstellar Mantis” and “In Your Mind,” the jam-based classic heavy blues boogie rockers give a glimpse at where they’re headed just the same. And that’s not to take away from “Space Shift” — which starts with the Star Wars sample from whence their moniker hails — or the scope in “Ashes to Ashes” made organic by the fluidity of the band’s performance, I’m just noting the progression underway in their sound. Whether brand new or not, they deliver, and the fact that they’ve added organ to the arrangements in the time since the record came out means these interpretations stand on their own regardless. Most of all, the set is a blast and sounds like they’re having as much fun playing as I am listening, which is plenty. It would feel silly to ask more of it than that, whatever it might portend for them moving forward.

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Bandcamp

Mos Eisley Spaceport on Instagram

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Dome Runner, World Panopticon

How lucky you are that after 40-plus years of industrial sounds depicting dystopian apocalyptic scenarios you finally get to live in one. Dome Runner are the machine punishment humanity deserves in an era where a tech CEO can casually say something about flying drones into people’s heads to kill them and/or licensing common knowledge on a subscription model and not be immediately imprisoned or extrajudicially hanged to the benefit of all. World Panopticon is suitably brutal across a 76-minute span, the Tampere, Finland, troupe keeping one foot in ’90s industrial metal as they did on their 2021 debut, Conflict State Design (review here), but filtering this through modern tonality and horrors. There are breaks, quiet parts in longer songs, interludes, etc., but I don’t know that I’d call any of it a real letup in the looming sense of oppression, and well, get used to that, because the boot on your neck that they’re portraying isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Welcome to the age of it-gets-worse-and-nobody-stops-it. At least you still have the music, for now.

Dome Runner on Bandcamp

Svart Records website

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Basaltic Plateau, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes

While clearly written as individual pieces, the six songs comprising the 36-minute run of Italian heavy psych instrumentalists Basaltic Plateau‘s late-’25 debut LP, Dead Dinosaurs Echoes flow exceedingly well into each other, extrapolating the ebbs and flows within a given track into how it interacts with those around it. In this way, the three-piece build a landscape of sound — some kind of sound… scape! — across the span, warm-toned and so easy enough to liken to a desert rock influence, but heavier in its payoff stretches and up for trippier weirdness in “Summer Dream” and the more technical severity of the closing title-cut, also the longest at nearly nine minutes, and less predictable in its entirety than one might expect going in. As a debut, their self-awareness bodes well, and the psych of “Cuttlefish Galaxy” and progressivism of “Sleep Paralysis” might be careening toward each other like the Milky Way and Andromeda, but if there’s to be a conflict between the two, it’s a ways off. In the meantime, their creative reach serves them in immersing the listener.

Basaltic Plateau on Bandcamp

Electric Valley Records website

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Gjenferd, Black Smoke Rising

Should you find yourself needing a reason to feel hopeful about the future of heavy rock, that Gjenferd might be part of it should more than suffice. The Bergen, Norway, four-piece of guitarist/vocalist Vegard Bachmann Strand, bassist Samuel Robson Gardner, keyboardist/vocalist Jakob Særvoll and drummer/vocalist Sivert Kleiven Larsen present their second album in Black Smoke Rising, and draw a thread back through decades of heavy rock stylization to conjure a sound that is their own and welcoming, unpretentious and progressive in kind. Whether it’s the shuffle of “Bound to Fall” and the hook of “Ride On” or the moodier nod of “Calling Your Name” and the mellow-till-it-ain’t “The Silence,” the band are dynamic, thoughtful in their craft and vital very much in the ‘alive’ sense of the word across the 10 inclusions, further distinguishing themselves among the emergent next generation of heavy rock and rollers. The listenability here can’t and shouldn’t be discounted, which is to say, don’t be surprised when you come back for another round with it.

Gjenferd’s Linktr.ee

Apollon Records website

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Codex Serafini, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity

I feel like it may forever be my fate to feel like I’m trying to catch up to Codex Serafini. Yes, temporally — their second LP, Mother, Give Your Children Sanity, came out last November — but also stylistically, and in this I feel a oneness with the universe, for which the UK outfit are an intentionally odd fit. Spacerocking in their own dimensional phase, the band follow 2023’s The Imprecation of Anima (review here) with a status-quo threatening cohesion that lands heavy with Wayne Adams‘ production but is more about the plunge into the farther far-out, sax and skronk and ritualistic melodies and madness. The title-track brings healing, but not like you’re thinking, whatever you’re thinking, and the subsequent blowout in capper “Marching Like a Toad” (before the drone finish) could hardly be better earned. Bands rarely sound so willing to follow where their whims take them, and the quirk in Mother, Give Your Children Sanity is more appreciable for that.

Codex Serafini on Bandcamp

Riot Season Records website

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Sunbreather, Sunbreather

Airy grunge pervades the self-titled 2025 full-length debut from UK trio Sunbreather, resulting in a tonal richness one can hear in the eponymous “Sunbreather” or the prior “Apricity” as the record gets going, creating a kind of terrestrial psychedelia that vocal effects and an upped fuzz quotient in all-caps centerpiece/side B leadoff “WINE” seems to revel in pushing to one side or another. I like this album a lot; the way it feels like it’s establishing one aspect of the band’s sound or another and then moves on to the next idea without losing itself in indulgence. The organic flow. The closing pair of “Sleep” and “Aubade” emphasize this, with a fuller lumber in “Sleep” that opens atmospherically in “Aubade” while staying dreamy in tempo at least for most of its time. I say all the time that the challenge for UK bands is distinguishing themselves from the constant glut of their home country’s underground. That might be true here as well, on its face, but in actually hearing the songs, Sunbreather come out ahead in terms of identity. I’m pretty sure this was self-released, but I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to find a label if they wanted to for it.

Sunbreather’s Linktr.ee

Sunbreather on Instagram

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Konung, Dope Druid

True, the Moscovian plodders don’t have ‘bong’ or ‘weed,’ etc., in their name, but they’re pretty close to bong metal regardless on this initial three-songer, Dope Druid, lumbering through dank megasludge on the opening title-track before rolling noisier into “Wolf Shepherd” and chug-and-feedbacking to a point of near-abrasion (of the willful sort, mind you) on “Tsar of Blood,” making for a solid 19 minutes of damage to eardrums and braincells alike. So much the better a tone on which to break onesself. Imagine drowning in bong water. They aren’t shooting for anything overly complicated, but there is sort of a scope to the onslaught, and the rawness overarching becomes a benefit to the impact of the material — its heft is engrossing and the way the harshness comes through the recording lends aggression to the groove — but I’m not sure that’s aspiration so much as fortunate circumstance. It’s moot, ultimately, because any way you go, Konung have come to crush you into flattened little bits, and the best advice I can give is go with it and deal with the cleanup after.

Konung on Bandcamp

Konung on Instagram

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I was gonna do this whole week, happy Monday, happy Tuesday, happy Wednesday, but I happen to feel like an asshole typing the words “happy Wednesday,” so I’m going to refrain. Hope your week isn’t awful, in any case.

Or if it is, I hope music can help make it better. This Quarterly Review has been a breeze thus far and looking at the lineup for today I expect the trend to continue. Thanks for hanging in with it. We pass the halfway mark today and will wrap up on Friday, with 50 releases covered throughout the week.

Quarterly Review #21-30:

Amorphis, Borderland

Yeah, okay, you can go ahead and cancel the rest of the review. Yup, I know. I’d love to sit here and talk about how Finland’s Amorphis, some 35 years and upwards of 16 full-lengths later, are still refining their processes, conjuring melodic intricacy, and celebrating death metal in kind. I’d love to talk about the progressive strains in Borderland, or about how as recognizable as Amorphis are, they’re still able to find new ways to balance the keys and guitar, or to switch up the vocals, or even just to chug proggier on “Light and Shadow” and “Fog to Fod,” whatever it might be. I’d love to talk about all of that, but you see, the thing is… “Bones.” Specifically, the riff thereof, swept into with crushing majesty and rolled forth with knows-what-it-has certainty of the type one would expect from a long-established pro-shop genre-innovating band like Amorphis. I could go on about all the other stuff, but that riff is gonna be all you need to know ahead of time. I’ll hope to have it in my head for the next year or so.

Amorphis website

Reigning Phoenix Music website

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Joe Hasselvander, Fire on the Mountain

One could spend the rest of this space recounting Joe Hasselvander‘s pedigree, from Death Row to Pentagram to Raven to The Hounds of Haseelvander, with stints in countless others including Blue Cheer besides, but that doesn’t tell you much about the doom of Fire on the Mountain. Hasselvander‘s third solo outing under his name and first in 25 years follows a traditional pattern of Doom Capitol blue-collar riffing that, it has to be acknowledged, Hasselvander had a part in establishing, while the man himself plays all instruments and handles vocals, at time with a bit of a lounge-singer edge with spoken lines, but when he reaches for the higher note in third cut “Holy Water,” a big moment in the song, it’s there for him. “Prodigal Sun” is one of several images taken from the bible and would seem to be autobiographical, and he ends with a fitting apex of nod and shred in “Darkest Before the Dawn.” He’s said he has plans for more, and indeed, Fire on the Mountain sounds more like a beginning than an end.

Joe Hasselvander on Facebook

Savant Guarde Records on Bandcamp

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Kariti, Still Life

A current of crackling, tube-heating distortion begins in “Spine,” which introduces Kariti‘s third album, Still Life, and indeed even amid the The Keening-esque piano of “Nothing” and the title-track a short time later, that hard-toned drone becomes a backbone for the material. It’s not always there — arrangements are fluid around the central guitar/keys/voice — but for an artist working in a style so intentionally mindful of aesthetic, the My Bloody Valentine-esque noise swell of “Suicide by a Thousand Cuts,” the emergence of the static in “Naiznanku” and the rumble behind the closing prayer “Baptism” bring dark avant garde experimentalism to traditionalist melodies. This is what Kariti has been developing since 2020’s Covered Mirrors (review here), working with guitarist Marco Matta on a deepening collaboration. While retaining folkish intimacy thanks to the quiet stretches around this distorted crunch (looking at you, “Purge”), Kariti has never sounded farther-reaching.

Kariti Linktr.ee

Lay Bare Recordings website

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Burning Sister, Ghosts

They don’t make ’em like Burning Sister anymore, and listening to Ghosts, I’m less sure they ever did. Because as much as the Colorado now-twosome of bassist/vocalist/synthesist Steve Miller and drummer Alison Salutz continue to foster a druggy ’90s-type slackerism amid all the crash in opener “Brokedick Icarus” and the drawling march of “No Space or Time,” they’ve also never quite sounded as much themselves. There’s psychedelic shimmer in the noise swirling in the later reaches of “Stellar Ghost,” and “Lethe//Oblivion” (premiered here) is made all the more a ceremony with the thread of synth and/or amplifier hum. Meanwhile, “Swerve (Dead Stars)” would work as a new wave arrangement, I can feel it, and the longest-song-by-a-second “Dead Love” (7:20) closes with a thrilling roll and languid procession, reinforcing the downerism that’s been essential to Burning Sister since their outset. Whatever comes in the future, being a duo suits these songs.

Burning Sister on Bandcamp

Burning Sister on Instagram

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The Lunar Effect, Fortune’s Always Hiding

A quick turnaround third full-length from London’s The Lunar Effect will be nothing to complain about for those who (like me) got on board with the London heavy rock outfit via last year’s Sounds of Green and Blue (review here). Also on Svart, the follow-up brims with cohesion in its songwriting and purpose in its twists, with the opener “Feed the Hand” establishing the command that proves unwavering through “Watchful Eye,” the brash speed-shuffler “Five and Two” and the lonely sway of “My Blue Veins” before “Stay With Me” modernizes Graveyardian soul en route to the grunge-riffed centerpiece “Settle Down.” The dynamic continues to expand with the piano-led “I Disappear” speaking to a burgeoning reach in songwriting, while “A New Moon Rises” regrounds and “Scotoma” smoothly finds a niche in desert rock that probably hundreds of bands wish they could make their own, and “Nailed to the Sky” rounds out by going big on tone and emotionality alike. So far, these guys are a better band than people know. They inject a little drama to these proceedings, and it sounds like there’s more to come.

The Lunar Effect website

Svart Records website

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King Cruel, Sky Eater

While the closing title-track has a thread of prog metal that reminds of mid-period Devin Townsend, Auckland, New Zealand’s King Cruel back their 2023 Creeper three-song EP with a marked sense of atmosphere, the melodies of careening lead track “Haunting Time” calling to mind Boston’s Worshipper in their metallic underpinnings, shred and thoughtful melody. Sky Eater is my first exposure to the band, whose style balances mood and impact smoothly, and whose hooks are inviting without being cloying, as in “Diamond Darya,” which digs in and rides its central riff with a stoner rocker’s dedication and a poise that comes from knowing why they’re doing it. The aforementioned capper is the catchiest of the bunch, but King Cruel, goal-wise, have more in their sights than catchiness, and given the sprawl they lay out here, one can’t help but wonder if a debut album won’t be next.

King Cruel Linktr.ee

King Cruel on Bandcamp

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Angad Berar, Sundae

I won’t claim to know how it was made, between what’s improvised, layered in, overdubbed, conjured from ethereal planes beyond the limits of understanding, and so on, but Angad Berar‘s eight-track/50-minute Sundae is indeed a sweet dish of psychedelic immersion. The Berlin-based solo artist made it in collaboration with guitarist/synthesist/bassist Kartik Pillai, while drummer Siddharth Kaushik sits in on the 10-minute penultimate cut and vocalist Chrisrah guests on the only song that isn’t a numbered jam, the moody mellow liquefier “Driving With You” before “Jam #3” and the horn sounds of “Jam #4” re-immerse the listener in slow-churning fluidity. “Jam #6,” with the live drums and extended runtime, is pointedly hypnotic in its first half, but has some Endless Boogie-type rock angularity later that makes it fun, while the closing “Jam #7” offers a seven-minute drone meditation before handing the listener back over to reality. Serenity abounds if you know where to find it.

Angad Berar on Bandcamp

Stickman Records store

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Trevor’s Head, Fall Toward the Sun // Majesty and Harmony

Admirably celebrating their 15th anniversary in 2025 with touring and new music, UK melodic heavy rockers Trevor’s Head bring the Abbey Road-recorded “Fall Toward the Sun” and “Majesty and Harmony” together, not quite to encapsulate their sound or everything they’ve accomplished in their time, but to typify the ethic of marking the occasion by doing the thing itself; that is, they’re writing music because it’s what they love to do. “Fall Toward the Sun” and “Majesty and Harmony” both have an edge of aired-out ’90s-type noise rock — nothing new for Trevor’s Head in terms of style — but where they hit you with it up front in the first song, the latter holds its payoff in reserve for when they depart the titular harmonies and get to the surge of crunch in the midsection. Running seven minutes total, you wouldn’t accuse Trevor’s Head of overindulging, but instead, they give their fans and followers something new to dig into that in ethic and realization can only serve as a reminder of their appeal in the first place.

Trevor’s Head Linktr.ee

APF Records website

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Ravine, Chaos and Catastrophes

Burl, crunch, lumber, crush, groove and sprawl — the Rob Wrong (Witch Mountain)-recorded debut full-length from Portland, Oregon, riffchucking five-piece Ravine knows from whence it hails. There are some flashes of cosmic intention, but sludgier, earthbound nods pervade the five-track/47-minute outing, which holds its ambition not in a performative stylistic overreach — that is to say, Ravine are who they are musically; there’s no pretense here as they hit you with it straight forward — but in the course each of these tracks takes. Their heaviest onslaught might be in the willfully, almost gleefully grueling “Ennui,” of course the centerpiece, but even there Ravine aren’t content just to doom, or rock, or sludge out, etc., instead working to create a sense of momentum within the songs as each follows its own path, marking out its own place while adding to the whole. They’re not done growing, and I don’t think the balance of their approach is settled, but given what they already lay out, that’s a strength in their favor. This is the kind of debut that makes friends.

Ravine on Bandcamp

Ripple Music store

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Malgomaj, Valfiskens Buk

Sweden’s Malgomaj aren’t through the opening title-track (a bookending two-parter) of Valfiskens Buk before they’ve put forth primo hard boogie and inventive Sabbathry, classic in influence, modern in production/execution, and continuing to brim with movement as “Rembrants Skugga” and the softshow-ready “Hej Hej Malgomaj” back it. I suppose the elephant in the room here is Graveyard, but “Värddjur” has more Motörheaded foundations, and the instrumental “Itera Mot Solnedgången” hints toward Westernism before the seven-minute “Cyklopisk Betong” flattens with its early riff only to redirect to ’60s-ish garage jangle, so one wouldn’t accuse Malgomaj on this apparent debut of being singleminded, but neither are they lacking cohesion or flow between songs. “Stöttingfjället Rämnar” answers the heft of the track prior and “Det Är Nåt Fel På Solen” sets a languid march before “Valfiskens Buk Del 2” reprises the opener to make the album sound all the more complete, whether you speak the language or not.

Malgomaj Linktr.ee

Ostron Records website

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It wasn’t overly hyped or anything, but I dug the gosh darn heck out of Dome Runner‘s first album, Conflict State Design (review here), when it came out through Svart in 2021. That record had a decidedly ’90s bent to it, with a pointed Godflesh influence at root in a way that the seven-minute single “Salvation Access” streaming below seems to work outward from. I hear less compression in the sound, more range and atmosphere, still with a heavy industrial charge running underneath. The new LP is called World Panopticon and it’s out Nov. 21, also through Svart Records.

Actually it’s a double-LP, and I’m here for the ’90s-style CD-era running time as well, especially if Dome Runner pan out to be as multifaceted as the first album made it seem they might. I haven’t heard the sophomore release yet, so can’t speak to the whole of the thing, but I’ll hope to hear it and have a review sometime between now and, well, whenever they do a third one, I guess. This post is very much a reminder to myself that that’s something I want to make happen when/if I’m able.

From the PR wire:

Salvation Access – DOME RUNNER’s new single out today; Upcoming album World Panopticon out in November via Svart Records

Industrial metal juggernaut DOME RUNNER have been grinding in the underground since 2017, fusing elements of extreme metal, hardcore and alternative with dystopian soundscapes and grinding machinery. Svart Records are proud to unleash their ambitious sophomore album World Panopticon in November.

The album’s second single Salvation Access was released today, October 24th, and the band’s mastermind Simo Perkiömäki comments on it as follows:

“In Salvation Access the album starts closing in thematically through collapse into acceptance, the place that ultimately sets the observer free. While the record deals with the various ways one tends to limit oneself even to the very edge of one’s own purpose, there are eventually deadends where you have to find another way instead of going through. The song represents a storm of light at the end of the tunnel for the soul-searching sun.” Watch the official visualiser for Salvation Access HERE

World Panopticon, the 77-minute double album, represent the strongest and most unafraid songwriting of the group while going dynamically and sonically further than ever before. Thematically spawn from a dystopian world as an escapist tale fused of observations of modern and future functions of society while simultaneously focusing in rebirth of the observing self-shackled within yet driven to break free, the album takes the listener deeper to the world around and beyond, open for those who dare to dive in.

World Panopticon is out on Svart exclusive ultra clear w/ black smoke vinyl, limited turquoise vinyl, classic black vinyl, and digipak CD. Release date November 21st.

21.11.2025 Dome Runner: World Panopticon (2LP/CD)
https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/dome-runner-world-panopticon/13730

21.11.2025 Dome Runner: World Panopticon (Digital)
https://orcd.co/worldpanopticon

Dome Runner: Salvation Access (Digital)
https://orcd.co/salvationaccess

Dome Runner: Split Self Matrix (Digital)
https://orcd.co/splitselfmatrix

https://domerunner.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/iamdomerunner
https://www.facebook.com/iamdomerunner

https://www.svartrecords.com/en
https://www.instagram.com/svartrecords
https://www.facebook.com/svartrecords

Dome Runner, “Salvation Access” visualizer

I suppose I’m speaking more to those who haven’t caught on to The Lunar Effect as yet — and if that’s you, don’t feel bad; I only got on board with last year’s Sounds of Green and Blue (review here); there’s no judging or gatekeeping going on, and if there was, I’m nobody to keep any gate. But, with that said, if you haven’t heard The Lunar Effect yet, consider not letting the new single “Feed the Hand,” for which they’ve put out a new video that features what would seem to be a different band playing the song while saying nothing about it — I think maybe because British humour, and on that level, they’re not wrong — but the song manages to soar in four minutes’ time and that’s pretty emblematic of who The Lunar Effect are in terms of the effectiveness of their craft.

They’ve been kicking around the London underground for eight years now, and they’re already confirmed for Masters of the Riff next March at Oslo Hackney. Look out for more confirmations as we get closer to and through the Oct. 24 release for their new album, Fortune’s Always Hiding, for which the new single acts as herald.

The PR wire brought art, info, the video for “Feed the Hand,” and more:

Dragging classic rock through a psychedelic haze and leaving it bleeding in the present – The Lunar Effect’s most ambitious work to date out in October via Svart Records

New single “Feed the Hand” out today with a video

24.10.2025 The Lunar Effect: Fortune’s Always Hiding (LP/CD Pre-Order): https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/the-lunar-effect-fortunes-always-hiding/13587

The Lunar Effect were formed in London in 2017 by brothers Jon and Dan Jefford and later completed by vocalist Josh Neuwford, bassist Brett Halsey, and eventually second guitarist Mark Fuller. Since their arrival on the scene, they’ve carved out a reputation for crafting music that feels both familiar and original – a modern echo of grunge-soaked ’70s rock, fuzzed-out blues, and melancholic British soul.

Following the underground success of 2019’s Calm Before the Calm, the band signed with Svart Records and released the critically praised sophomore album Sounds of Green & Blue in 2024. After touring the album across the UK and Europe, they set their sights on album three, their most ambitious work to date. Fortune’s Always Hiding lands in October 2025; a brooding journey through loss, memory, and the weight of time. It marks a new era for the band – deeper, stranger, and more soul-baring than ever.

The first taste from the upcoming album was released today. “Feed the Hand sets the tone for what’s to come, uncomfortable, deliberate, and heavy with implication. It reaches back with one hand, grabbing a handful of early 90’s alternative nostalgia to bring a high energy groove. With the other, it drags the listener through an unravelling; guidance twisted into obedience, time eroding memory from a feeling to a realisation. There’s weight here, but it’s not theatrical. It’s cathartic and satisfyingly powerful. A quiet reckoning fed by the band’s influences, serving up a whole new dish to the table.” the band comments on the new single. Watch the video for Feed the Hand HERE

They don’t imitate the past, they channel its spirit through a warped, modern lens. From thunderous grooves and fuzz-soaked guitar riffs to intimate, fractured vocals, The Lunar Effect channel the unease of the modern world with a sound that refuses to sit still.

2026 promises more touring, more evolution, and no interest in standing still. For a band that’s never fit neatly into any box, The Lunar Effect continue building their own universe — one hypnotic, heavy track at a time.

Fortune’s Always Hiding is available on Svart exclusive Cream/Red/Orange marble vinyl, limited Transparent Green vinyl, Black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on October 24th, 2025.

Tracklisting:
1. Feed the Hand
2. Watchful Eye
3. Five and Two
4. My Blue Veins
5. Stay With Me
6. Settle Down
7. I Disappear
8. A New Moon Rises
9. Scotoma
10. Nailed to the Sky
11. Tomorrow Comes Too Soon (Bonus Track)

The Lunar Effect: Feed The Hand (Digital): https://orcd.co/feedthehand

http://www.thelunareffect.co.uk/
https://linktr.ee/Thelunareffect
https://thelunareffect.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/thelunareffect/
http://www.facebook.com/thelunareffect

https://www.svartrecords.com/
https://www.instagram.com/svartrecords/
https://www.facebook.com/svartrecords/

The Lunar Effect, Fortune’s Always Hiding (2025)

The Lunar Effect, “Feed the Hand” official video

Finnish collective Entheomorphosis will release their four-song LP, Pyhä Kuilu, this Friday, May 23. Set to issue through Svart Records, it is the first record for the band under this guise, but part of a lineage that can be followed backward for more than a decade to some of these players’ time in Mr. Peter Hayden, which evolved first into PH, later into Enphin, and now emerges sludgy and expansive through a 31-minute procession of works mostly centered around the extended opener “Alkiema” (13:26) and closer “Iätön” (12:11). These bookends that put the longest track first (immediate points) surround “Sikinä” (4:22) and “Huntu” (1:55), but although shorter, each one of those adds something distinct to the entirety.

Sludge is the foundation, weird is the mandate. Entheomorphosis sidestep the PH/Enphin progression of synthesizer cosmic megadrone in favor of painting a rawer futuristic sound, the tones of guitar and bass coming through after the ambient unfolding of “Alkiema” with post-metallic sprawl, but the count-in on drums a bit past the four-minute mark leads into a more directly-, purposefully-riff-driven verse, the gutted out vocals of guitarist Vesa Ajomo (also Moog) calling to mind harsh turn-of-the-century-era fuckall while remaining its own thing atmospherically — not to mention it’s in Finnish. The nod grows tortured and comes apart to thuds and ambience circa 9:30, and the minimalism feels particularly stark for how consuming the volume got before they dropped it. A meditative, liquefied pattern takes hold, topped suitably with throat-singing, and Pyhä Kuilu‘s initial movement ends in murk.

Thus the drums and bass rumble that start “Sikinä” — provided by Lassi Männikkö and Lauri Kivelä, respectively — and the backing howl of guitar either from Ajomo or JP Koivisto feel like a mismatch to the blackened rasp of the vocals, but that’s the point, and the way the guitar and synth subtly comes forward over the Godfleshian roll before, again, they drop it back to the bass and drums and then just the drums, is hypnotic. “Huntu” strikes a more foreboding cast. Synth-driven, it is more willfully cinematic, evoking a sense of unease in the world, like you’re in the wrong timeline and there’s robots — so maybe I recently watched that Blade Runner sequel on a plane — and though it’s short, it is both a setup for the riff-led return that closes with “Iätön” and a claim laid to future atmospheric exploration beyond that led by the guitar elsewhere.

Not necessarily a surprise they’d foster an open context given the band’s pedigree and the attention to fleshing out ideas, but it’s part of what furthers the feel of Pyhä Kuilu as a debut album, and “Iätön” ebbs and flows like mid-’90s Neurosis and is no less viscerally noise-laced when they let it drift into feedback after five minutes in, eventually making their way down to barely-there emptiness before bringing it all the way slamming back into a squibbly-topped final culmination. Here too, Entheomorphosis complete the bookend, just as “Iätön” itself answers back to “Alkiema” at the outset in its longer-form structure, outward heft and well-mixed vocal shout. It is a short full-length at 31 minutes, as noted, but “Iätön” assures by the time it’s done that Pyhä Kuilu feels complete in the now as it sets the trajectory for the band’s evolution.

And as to whether or not that will happen, that is, if Entheomorphosis will develop as a project over multiple releases or if the whims and directions of those behind it will lead them elsewhere, I know better than to predict. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll note that Lauri Kivelä and I were both involved in the industrial project Alitila, which released an album in March. This collaboration had no bearing on my choice to feature this record, and if you doubt that, I’ve got a decade-plus of writing about Kivelä‘s writing from before we actually worked together to demonstrate that I’d probably be writing about this anyhow. I don’t know why I feel the need to say these things at a time when $400 million jetliners are being tossed at government officials for seen and unseen favors, but the Gen X in me can’t help but give a shit about integrity. Thanks for reading.

Pyhä Kuilu streams in its entirety below, followed by more background on the songs and narrative from the PR wire.

Please enjoy:

23.5.2025 Entheomorphosis: Pyhä kuilu (LP/CD Pre-order)
https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/entheomorphosis-pyha-kuilu/13153

PYHÄ KUILU is a journey across four movements, with each composition unravelling layers of profound symbolic meaning:

● “Alkiema” explores the absorption and distillation of light into a singularity—a dark, cosmic initiation leading to a metamorphosis of flesh and spirit.

●”Sikinä” follows with the re-birth of refined truth in flesh—a process of nourishment, ascension, and the painful shedding of old forms.

●”Huntu” acts as an atmospheric interlude, representing the tearing away of the illusory, exposing the core essence of the soul’s path.

●”Iätön” culminates the album’s journey in the transformation of the refined soul into an active operator of the Universal current, altering reality itself.

Entheomorphosis
Vesa Ajomo: Vocals, Guitar, Moog
Lauri Kivelä: Bass
JP Koivisto: Guitar
Lassi Männikkö: Drums

Band photo by Maija Ajomo.

Entheomorphosis on Instagram

Entheomorphosis website

Entheomorphosis on Bandcamp

Svart Records website

Svart Records on Facebook

Svart Records on Instagram

“Full Moon Fever” appeared on The Gates of Slumber‘s 2024 comebacker self-titled (review here), issued through Svart. On the album, it’s one of the speedier songs if you’re talking average tempo, though “At Dawn,” “The Plague,” and so on are prone to faster parts as well, if not beholden to them in quite the same way the Indianapolis three-piece revel in the grueling nod elsewhere. Led by guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, who revamped the lineup now six years ago (that’s a GTFO realization for me) with original drummer Chuck Brown and newcomer bassist Steve Janiak, both of whom also handle guitar and vocals in Apostle of Solitude.

So, doom band makes video a while after record is out. That’s only a good thing, and if you follow Apostle, you already know that Janiak has had a hand in a number of clips for that band. That’s not what’s happening here though. “Full Moon Fever” was directed by Tad Leger, who has drummed for Toxik, Blood Farmers, Lucertola and a host of others, and who has done layout work in horror cinema for I don’t even know how long as a graphic designer. Don’t be surprised when you see the wolfman show up, is what I’m saying, and the classic-horror that pervades does so with a firm grip on whence it comes.

It had been a while, so I decided to bother Leger for some comment about making the clip, and he was kind enough to indulge. You’ll find that below, followed by more from the PR wire. I don’t think The Gates of Slumber are really plugging anything other than the existence of the record or the band as they stand, and that’s plenty as far as I’m concerned. If you believe in doom, you believe in The Gates of Slumber.

From the PR wire:

The Gates of Slumber, “Full Moon Fever” video

Tad Leger on “Full Moon Fever”:

“I felt like ‘Full Moon Fever’ was a very cinematic feel. It filled my mind with images from classic films by Hammer and German expressionist filmmakers who used a monochromatic color palette. My friend Cliff Peck and I put in serious hours to craft something worthy of Gates of Slumber. Big thanks to Karl Simon for giving us such a challenging experience.”

“I was talking with our buddy Tad and he expressed an interest in doing the lyric video,” explains guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon. “Tad’s a massive fan of classic horror and he was into the song…. One thing led to another and he and his buddy Cliff came up with what I think is a pretty killer video clip! Hope you enjoy.”

THE GATES OF SLUMBER was formed by Karl Simon in 1998. Various people were in and out of the group between 1998 and 2001, when the Blood Encrusted Deth Axe demo was recorded with Jamie Walters aka Dr. Phibes/Athenar (Boulder, Midnight) on drums and bass. In 2003 Jason McCash took over the bass duties and was a long-time member of the band until his untimely demise in 2014, after which Simon decided it was time to call it quits. That was until 2019 when the renowned metal festival Hell Over Hammaburg wanted to bring the band back on stage to perform at the festival’s 2020 edition. Simon reformed the band with its original member Chuck Brown on drums and Steve Janiak on bass and got back to work.

The Gates of Slumber is available on Svart-exclusive black/white marble vinyl, limited transparent blue vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and all major digital platforms.

The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber (2024)

The Gates of Slumber on Facebook

The Gates of Slumber on Instagram

The Gates of Slumber on Bandcamp

The Gates of Slumber merch

Svart Records website

Svart Records on Facebook

Svart Records on Instagram

There’s a lot to unpack here, so sit tight. First, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll note that these are artists with whom I’ve collaborated before. Lauri Kivelä, Vesa Vatanen and I made a record a little while back for a project called Alitila that’s coming out in March. So that’s worth mentioning. Second, Entheomorphosis, in which Kivelä is joined by Vesa Ajomo of Dark Buddha Rising, etc., is a new project but part of a longer thread of work these guys have undertaken starting over 15 years ago when Mr. Peter Hayden set out and following through to more recent output as Enphin, blowing out electronic psych and experimentalist textures of drone.

Some of that is happening on the upcoming Pyhä Kuilu as well, as you can hear in the synth-horror of the penultimate interlude “Huntu” ahead of the finale “Iätön,” a bookend with opener and longest cut (immediate points) “Alkiema,” which follows a similar path of somewhat agonized longform sludge experimentalism, Ajomo‘s lyrics (in Finnish) giving voice to the overarching meditation and spiritual journey in the music. As has been the case with their work all along, it doesn’t sound like anything so much as itself.

May is a while off, so there’s no audio yet, but Svart sent this down the PR wire:

Entheomorphosis’ debut album PYHÄ KUILU will stare through you!

Featuring members of Dark Buddha Rising and Mr Peter Hayden/PH/Enphin

The Finnish underground music scene is set to welcome a formidable new entity as Entheomorphosis announce the release of their debut album PYHÄ KUILU (“Holy Abyss”) on May 23rd, 2025 via Svart Records. A collaborative new outfit featuring seasoned members from the enigmatic Dark Buddha Rising and the genre-defying Mr Peter Hayden/PH/Enphin, Entheomorphosis has crafted an immersive sonic purge that plunges into the depths of transformation, spirituality, and cosmic dissolution.

Guitarist Vesa Ajomo (Dark Buddha Rising), one of the principal architects behind the project, explains:

“Entheomorphosis was born in the need to refine artistic and spiritual work. During the years of turmoil and isolation, the main riffs were forged and over time they meandered into an album that has the most emotional weight that I have ever been involved with. This is the process of physical, spiritual, and mental transformation.”

With crushing riffs, hypnotic rhythms, and dark, ceremonial vocals, PYHÄ KUILU carves out an abyssal space where listeners can confront their own psychic dissolution and re-creation. Each track invites the audience to partake in the process of unveiling, where the descent into swirling chaos of Entheomorphosis leads to spiritual refinement and ascension. It’s not all about leaving the listener in the dark however, as there is a more transcendent mission within the Entheomorphosis quest.

As Vesa Ajomo puts it:

“Within this album we have captured the energy, intuition, and guidance in the most organic form possible and allowed the compositions to take their final form at a slow pace. Through this initiation, we have found the holy abyss and bravely dived into the darkness in order to find the light.”

Entheomorphosis channels the influences of doom, drone, and avant-garde metal, yet the album stands as a work of unique potency. For fans of Neurosis, Godflesh, and especially the celebrated Finnish dark and heavy Psychedelic underground, Entheomorphosis is at the very underneath of the hypnotic dark underbelly of psychedelia. Recorded with a minimalist ethos, the band prioritized capturing the raw intensity and spiritual essence of their compositions, ensuring that PYHÄ KUILU resonates with both primal and metaphysical power.

PYHÄ KUILU is available on Svart exclusive transparent violet/black smoke vinyl, band exclusive transparent green/black smoke, limited gold vinyl, black vinyl, CD, and digital platforms on May 23rd, 2025. The album release show will take place at the Sonic Rites festival in Helsinki on 23rd – 24th of May, 2025.

23.5.2025 Entheomorphosis: Pyhä kuilu (LP/CD Pre-order)
https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/entheomorphosis-pyha-kuilu/13153

PYHÄ KUILU is a journey across four movements, with each composition unravelling layers of profound symbolic meaning:

● “Alkiema” explores the absorption and distillation of light into a singularity—a dark, cosmic initiation leading to a metamorphosis of flesh and spirit.

●”Sikinä” follows with the re-birth of refined truth in flesh—a process of nourishment, ascension, and the painful shedding of old forms.

●”Huntu” acts as an atmospheric interlude, representing the tearing away of the illusory, exposing the core essence of the soul’s path.

●”Iätön” culminates the album’s journey in the transformation of the refined soul into an active operator of the Universal current, altering reality itself.

Entheomorphosis
Vesa Ajomo: Vocals, Guitar, Moog
Lauri Kivelä: Bass
JP Koivisto: Guitar
Lassi Männikkö: Drums

Band photo by Maija Ajomo.

https://www.instagram.com/entheomorphosis/
https://www.entheomorphosis.com/
https://entheomorphosis.bandcamp.com/

https://www.svartrecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/svartrecords/
https://www.instagram.com/svartrecords/

The last full-length offering from Indianapolis traditionalist doomers The Gates of Slumber was The Wretch in 2011, and it’s been a long road getting from there to their self-titled sixth album, also their first outing through Svart Records. Begun in 1998 in the message-board era of internet-based doomly proliferation, and led in the present by founding guitarist/vocalist Karl Simon, the band’s six-song/35-minute return opus features bassist/backing vocalist Steve Janiak (also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude, Devil to Pay) and drummer Chuck Brown (also also guitar/vocals in Apostle of Solitude), a lineup that first came together in 2019. The occasion at that point was a return performance at Germany’s Hell Over Hammaburg festival in — wait for it — March 2020.

That fest actually happened (it was early in the month), but of course there wouldn’t be much opportunity for building momentum from there as a global pandemic shut down the world. Already at that point, the band’s path had been tumultuous, from the 2014 passing of then-former bassist Jason McCash after The Gates of Slumber‘s final release, 2013’s Scion A/V-backed Stormcrow EP (review here) and disbanding. As Simon moved forward to release a self-titled debut (review here) with a new trio, Wretch, in 2016, who also toured that year and the next in the US and Europe, issuing the EP Bastards Born (review here) in 2017 and making live appearances right up to an East Coast run in Spring 2019, the path back to The Gates of Slumber is somewhat tumultuous, but the point is that the music never really stopped — there was also the Gates live album, Live in Tempe, Arizona (discussed here), in 2020 — and the fact that the Simon/Janiak/Brown lineup have been playing together for five years in addition to knowing each other for probably decades by virtue of their respective tenures in the Indy underground might account for some of the cohesion heard across the material on The Gates of Slumber. Or it might just be that they know what the fuck they’re doing with slow riffs and morose vibes. Take your pick.

Either way, The Gates of Slumber is a clear and concise statement of intent and declaration of self on the part of the band who made it, perhaps nowhere more so than on the four-minute side B leadoff “At Dawn.” While certainly not the first time the band has conjured a gallop in their quarter-century-plus history, the chug the trio ride there is particularly fluid. By that point in the proceedings, the revamped dynamic has already been unveiled, as Janiak not only takes a backing role on vocals for the grueling-but-catchy opening cut “Embrace the Lie” but handles some leads as well, going on to anchor the extinction-themed, later-Iommi-hued chorus of the subsequent “We Are Perdition” with an effective drawling delivery of the lyric “…global holocaust” before side A capper “Full Moon Fever” begins the tempo kick that “At Dawn” will push further, Brown‘s drums slow-swinging in classic fashion behind some harsher vocal delve from Simon in the song’s middle, before the scorching solo and march into the gradual fadeout take hold to comprise the back half.

Already by that point the message that The Gates of Slumber are “back” has come through clearly, but in terms of aesthetic, their revelry of course takes a darker, more depressive hue. After “At Dawn” — which is neither the first fast or short song the band has ever had but stands out here nonetheless — The Gates of Slumber redirects to its closing duo, the seven-minutes-apiece pairing of “The Fog” and “The Plague,” the former of which rumbles out a lonely bassline before crashing in at full volume. It’s not quite like slamming into a wall, and even here the shifting character of the band can be heard in some of Janiak‘s punchthrough flourish in the low end, but the feeling of having arrived is palpable just the same as the initial chants begin, reminding the audience that this is a band who might consider the likes of Reverend Bizarre as peers, and whose roll has served as a catalyst for others in the style in the past. On a record brimming with doom, “The Fog” and “The Plague” both are especially doomed. A righteous culmination in “The Fog” after Simon‘s solo brings a crashout finish, and standalone guitar begins “The Plague” with due foreboding.

If “The Plague” is the payoff for the album as a whole — and it makes arguments for being thought of that way — then it’s all the more appropriate how much it reaffirms who The Gates of Slumber are while looking ahead to how that might continue to take shape over the course of this incarnation of the band. Slightly shorter than the song before, it is more willful in its slog, and thereby suitable to the subject of its title, and doubly notable for the coming together of Simon and Janiak for harmonies in the early hook before the song takes off on a Saint Vitus-esque shove leading to an eventual crawling return and shift back into that chorus, all the more effective the second time around for having so strongly declared itself the first. Even in that moment, the band remains identifiably The Gates of Slumber, but the element of ‘something new happening here’ isn’t to be discounted, and this isn’t the first time an established doom act has been richer sonically as a result of bringing Janiak on board. Some players make everyone around them sound better.

Whether or not “The Plague” is telling as to the future direction of The Gates of Slumber can’t really be known until when and if they do something after it, and a more immediate consideration is the fact that despite having significant ’00s and ’10s laurels to rest upon, they don’t, and that a crucial facet of this self-titled — the band stating in no uncertain terms this is who they are, right down to the minimalist black-on-black logo album cover because what’s the point of art or for that matter anything? — is what it adds to the scope of the band’s take on doom. It makes the record more than just a comeback for the band, reassuring that along with the grim point of view that’s informed their work all along and their commitment to a firm idea of what doom metal is and does, they’re finding spaces in which to progress and continuing to leave their stamp on the genre. The Gates of Slumber had long since earned a place among the finest American doom of the last 25 years. That they sound so hungry as well as so miserable results in an odd hopefulness for things to come. I’ll skip the hyperbole in the spirit of a band so clearly bent on purging bullshit from their sound, but at the very least, doom should be so lucky as to have The Gates of Slumber as the band’s hard-won new beginning.

The Gates of Slumber, The Gates of Slumber (2024)

The Gates of Slumber on Facebook

The Gates of Slumber on Instagram

The Gates of Slumber on Bandcamp

The Gates of Slumber merch

Svart Records website

Svart Records on Facebook

Svart Records on Instagram