Kez Whelan gets straight to the point in his latest roundup of newheavy metal, which this month features Converge’s second brilliant LP of 2026, an audacious orchestral recording from Voivod, the latest disappointment from Venom, and much much more
I’m going to skip the introductions this month and get straight down to business – just like the new EP from Italian grinders Ape Unit, Sticks, which is probably the tightest, most robust demonstration of their madcap fastcore sound yet. Despite how impressively technical the band’s sound is (try wrapping your ears round the fiddly, dissonant riff clusters strewn throughout songs like ‘Toy Boy Division’ or the incendiary ‘Lieutenant Tennent’s’), what immediately strikes you is just how fun it is to listen to, with the band’s creative song structures and mischievous sense of humour shining through in even Sticks’ most brutal moments. Ape Unit never cross the line into being overly wacky for wackiness’ sake, and manage to squeeze more ideas into these eleven minutes than many bands do in full-length records, incorporating elements of powerviolence (‘Diet Cong’), noise rock (‘Biodegradable Youth Exchange’) and even death metal in the Morbid Angel aping ‘Where The Smile Lives’.
Fans of thrashy black metal have been eating well of late – the new Darkthrone album is unsurprisingly another cast iron banger, and the fourth album from Aberdeen’s Hellripper is arguably the band’s most ambitious and fully realised outing yet. Whilst 2023’s Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags hinted at a somewhat cleaner sound and more adventurous song structures, Coronach dives headfirst into this new direction. Opener ‘Hunderprest’ and the aptly named ‘Blakk Satanik Fvkkstorm’ are no-nonsense black/thrash rippers, of course, but the winding, progressive structures and epic, melodic leads of songs like ‘Baobhan Sith (Waltz Of The Damned)’ and the towering title track feel more like vintage Metallica liberally doused in corpse paint. Whilst it may clean up the Hellripper sound a lot, it’s also probably the most distinctive and unique record they’ve released yet. If you’re after some grittier blackened thrash though, Manchester’s Aggressive Perfector have got you covered. Their filth encrusted second album, Come Creeping Fiends, has an infectiously manic energy to it, bringing in both more anthemic NWOBHM influences and a gutter level street punk vibe that adds a lot of character to their Venom-esque thrashing.
Speaking of Venom, they’re back with their sixteenth album this month, and first since 2018’s Storm The Gates. Initial fears that the cover art was AI generated seem to be unfounded, but honestly, the music may as well be at this point given how bereft of fresh ideas the band are. If Venom felt stale back in 2006 the first time they rehashed the iconic Black Metal cover art for, ahem, Metal Black, then the well has truly run dry here – ‘Lay Down Your Soul’ is not so much a riff on the song ‘Black Metal’ but essentially a poorly rewritten version of the same song, whilst ‘Nevermore’ feels just a few notes off from ‘Countess Bathory’. When they’re not recycling ideas from their ‘80s heyday, they’re just plodding through the same dull groove metal shapes they’ve been churning out for their last few albums, with tepid, pinch harmonic infested chuggers like ‘Legend’ failing to inspire much excitement. It’s a shame as the lack of ideas could be forgiven if the energy was there – Motörhead hardly reinvented themselves, well, ever, and still keep belting out solid records to the end. Mantas and Abaddon both sounded in fine form touring the Black Metal album with Venom Inc. a little while back (although, hilariously, both have subsequently left, leaving Venom Inc. with no original Venom members at all), and you get the feeling that if they could all just bury the hatchet, we’d finally get an album worthy of the Venom name again – but unfortunately, this is not it.
This is one of the albums I’ve been most curious to spin this year, as I’m sure many of you have – for the obvious reason that Watching From A Distance is one of the most uniquely affecting classics in the doom canon, sure, but also because Patrick Walker’s songwriting style has changed so much in the two decades since that album’s release, moving away from crushing traditional doom metal and further into sombre slowcore and strummier singer/songwriter territory. Given how definitive Watching From A Distance was and the direction 40 Watt Sun had gone in, you’d be forgiven for wondering if Walker had anything left to say in this style. The answer is, thankfully, a resounding yes – there are certainly traces of 40 Watt Sun’s more wistful, lighter approach seeping through in the dreamlike textures of ‘Landing Lights’, but for the most part, Rituals Of Shame is pure, unabashed doom metal, albeit with that special, achingly emotive touch that Walker always brings, of course.
The opening title track hits like a sack of cement dropped into the ocean, with Walker’s iconic voice soaring above slow, yearning guitar harmonies that instantly invoke both the sonic and emotional weight of Warning in their prime – the kind of rich, resonant doom harmonies where the notes just blend together in a way that hurts. The aptly named ‘Night Comes Down’ is even heavier, as mournful chords slowly ooze over you like darkness at dusk, gradually unfurling melodies that feel somehow ancient, as if they’ve been floating in the ether for centuries, whilst ‘Teacher’ almost feels like a spiritual successor to ‘Footprints’ in its sincerity and vulnerability, with Patrick’s voice almost cracking under the weight of the song’s themes at its devastating peak. Following up a widely agreed upon classic is never easy, especially if said classic’s stature has only grown in the 20 years it’s been left to marinate, but Rituals Of Shame does an admirable job, integrating all the songwriting lessons Walker has learned in the intervening years into a powerful sound that resolutely feels like Warning through and through.
Given what an absolute rager Converge’s last album Love Is Not Enough was, I was fully expecting this swiftly released companion album to be a more subdued, experimental affair, but it’s nowhere near as clear cut as that; as furious opener ‘Slip The Noose’ makes abundantly clear from the off, with drummer Ben Koller blasting away like his life depends on it. Vocalist Jacob Bannon has said the band’s initial impetus here was to “make a noise rock album”, before ending up with two different, distinct records, neither of which were really that – but of the two, Hum Of Hurt definitely leans further into that sound with the clanking bass lines, menacing grooves and caustic, seething guitar in tracks like ‘Doom In Bloom’ or the swaggering ‘I Won’t Let You’ occasionally sounding like an amped up Jesus Lizard.
At the same time though, this still very much feels like a Converge record – the stuttering riffs and ferocious energy of tracks like ‘It Only Gets Worse’ and ‘Detonator’ feel like classic Converge, and even the weirder cuts like the ominous six-minute ‘Dream Debris’ don’t feel like a huge departure, especially given how much noise rock influence they’d displayed on recent songs like ‘Trigger’. It does, however, have a noticeably different vibe to Love Is Not Enough –it complements it, sure, but after just a few cursory spins it’s easy to see why the band separated them into two different records rather than unleashing a mammoth double-album. And that’s before we’ve even gotten into the record’s concept; with Bannon’s lyrics exploring the bizarrely invasive phenomenon of “the Hum”, a mysterious tinnitus-like affliction that can cause severe psychological distress to those who hear it, Hum Of Hurt has perhaps the most specifically focussed theme of any Converge record yet. If Love Is Not Enough felt like a real return to form, then this is the sound of the band hitting the ground running and continuing to do what they do best – long may it continue!
Decrepitizing Din Of The Cerebral Psyopticon (LUNGS-320) by FAKE DUST
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic right out of the gate, I’d bet this Portland quartet’s debut album is going to be the best grindcore album you hear this year. Bold words for a mere five months into 2026, but this record is just that good. Featuring members of powerviolence acts like Family Vacation and Sniping Pigs plus blaster extraordinaire Brennan Butler (of Infernal Coil, Human Effluence, Pyrkagion and more), Fake Dust already showed bags of promise on both their demos, but this debut album still feels like a huge step up, delivering some of the fastest, harshest and downright gnarliest deathgrind I’ve heard in a very long time. It feels like Insect Warfare with more Jon Chang style screeches and even more skin-flaying blastbeats, with Butler turning in a genuinely ludicrous performance on the kit, blasting at daft speeds with both astonishing technical precision and inhuman energy levels.
Your first exposure to this will likely feel like chomping down on a live grenade, but repeated listens reveal some excellent songwriting amongst the veritable blastbeat feast on offer here. ‘Implanted Imperative’, for instance, sounds absolutely enormous, especially when it plows into that thick, chunky mosh groove in the middle. ‘Stalker’, meanwhile, rapidly and violently snaps between knuckle-dragging riffing and lightspeed blasting in a way that belies the band members’ powerviolence past, whilst longer cuts like ‘Cooked At Conception’ inject some righteous thrashing into the band’s chaotic din, accelerating the tempo until it bursts into all-out grindcore blitzkrieg. Beyond the somewhat word salad-y album title, the band’s ruthless efficiency also extends to their lyrical approach, with each of these songs reading like bleakly provocative dystopian haikus. Even if you’re not big on grindcore, I feel like this, much like World Extermination orThe Inalienable Dreamless, is a record that transcends the genre’s parameters to become essential listening for anyone with even the slightest interest in extreme music in general.
Vertebrae After Vertebrae by PHARMACIST
It’s been four years since we last heard from this Japanese goregrind duo, with even their usual torrent of split releases drying up after their second album Flourishing Extremities On Unspoiled Mental Grounds. That record felt like a big step forward for the pair, marrying their pungent, filthy goregrind to elaborate, progressive song structures with more melodic elements and curiously jazzy solos – it almost felt like every era of Carcass pulped together into one intriguingly grotesque pile of goo – so it initially feels like somewhat of a step backwards to discover that this, their long-awaited third full-length, dispenses with much of those flamboyant embellishments to focus on more primitive, blood-splattered grinding.
The album certainly opens up with repeat spins however, and running almost ten minutes shorter than their last record, it feels more lean and focussed overall – even with the song lengths generally coming in much longer than your average grind band. The duo’s idiosyncratic song-writing style still has a very unique charm, with a palpable classic heavy metal undercurrent running through these caustic chunks of gore (especially on the raging ‘Lazure Sphacelation’, which lurches between frantic blasting and righteous metallic galloping). The title track, meanwhile, keeps things interesting rhythmically whilst maintaining the band’s bulldozer sound and remaining eminently headbangable throughout, and six minute epic ‘Endogenica’ is the closest goregrind comes to riff worship, settling into a gigantic, crunchy groove and riding it to oblivion. Vertebrae After Vertebrae may not be as forward-thinking as Pharmacist’s last offering, but it’s just as satisfying in its rancid onslaught.
Beckoning The Void Of Eternal Silence by Funebrarum
We haven’t heard from American death metal institution Funebrarum in a decade, and even longer still since their second album The Sleep Of Morbid Dreams –such a long time, in fact, that vocalist Daryl Kahan is the only remaining member from that incarnation of the band. He’s assembled a stellar line-up for this record however, including the go-to modern death metal drummer of choice, Charlie Koryn (of Ascended Dead, VoidCeremony, Decrepisy and many more) and fretboard wizard Phil Tougas (of Chthe’illist, Atramentus, Worm, Zeicrydeus and probably at least twelve more bands he’ll have formed since this has gone to print). Whilst the new members have certainly put their own touch on the band’s formula (check out those extremely Tougas-ified whammy licks that punctuate the end of the crushing title track), it’s respectfully done, with that classic, lumbering, doom-laden Funebrarum sound shining through in thick, juicy cuts like ‘Ša Nagba Amāru’, feeling like prime Incantation dragged down even further into a dark, cavernous murk.
The album’s rich atmosphere doesn’t come at the expense of sonic clarity however, with Beckoning The Void Of Eternal Silence being perhaps the band’s crispest sounding record to date. I’d hesitate to call it something like a sonic “sheen”, as the guitar and bass still combine to create a weighty, suffocating smog, but there’s an additional sharpness to the production here that really lets some of the more intricate details slice through the mix. Check out that eerie melody that creeps in over the end of ‘Into Dark Domain’s pulverising chugging, for instance, or the nimble, fiddly riffs in the faster and more frantic ‘Anhela Odor Mortuorum (The Adepts)’. Beckoning The Void Of Eternal Silence may not dazzle with wild proggy passages or groundbreaking new ideas, but it’s a very solid and accomplished doomy death metal record that still has a personality all of its own – and that’s probably exactly what Funebrarum fans were waiting for with this one, so tuck in!
Symphonique (Live) [24-bit HD audio] by Voivod
Finally, oddball Canadian thrash legends Voivod have pulled an S&M this month and dished up a live album with the backing of the Quebec Symphony Orchestra. It’s sometimes easy to forget that Metallica had been together for less than two decades when they did the same with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra – Voivod, meanwhile, are now in their 45th year of existence, and have a much wider back catalogue to draw from here. The setlist here really does feel career-spanning, collecting several more recent tunes with a smattering of ancient classics, whilst mostly drawing from Dimension Hatröss and Nothingface. These songs generally gel better with the orchestral accompaniments, which usually feel less like the sweeping Morricone-isms of S&M, instead nestled somewhere between the ominous grandeur of John Williams’ sci-fi soundtracks and more orchestrated ‘70s prog skronk like Magma (the deranged bounce of ‘The Unknown Knows’ especially). Spacious tracks like ‘Cosmic Drama’ really give the orchestra room to spread out, adding all sorts of little embellishments to the spiralling paranoia of the original piece. A lot of the newer songs lend themselves surprisingly well to this set-up too; ‘The End Of Dormancy’, from the band’s storming 2018 return to form The Wake, is transformed from a pounding chugger into the kind of dramatic coda you could easily picture Darth Vader marching through pristine spaceship corridors to, whilst it’s hard to believe ‘Fall’, a lesser known number from the 2016 Post Society EP, wasn’t originally written with the orchestra’s backing in mind, given how much it elevates the song’s jittery grooves.
The orchestra feels a bit more subdued on the older, more frantically thrashy cuts, perhaps out of necessity so as not to overwhelm those intricate guitar lines – but nevertheless, those extra strings certainly add an extra oomph to anthems like ‘Forgotten In Space’ from Killing Technology, stabbing along with the song’s breakneck pulse. ‘Nuclear War’, however, by far the oldest track here dating right back to the band’s ’84 debut War And Pain, starts with similarly minimal accompaniment before the orchestra seems to swell louder and louder every time the band loop that menacing palm-muted verse riff, until the whole thing eventually erupts into a cacophonously colourful crescendo, fitting of the song’s name. This whole record could easily have been a bloated, cluttered misfire, but as it stands, it’s arguably the most cinematic Voivod have ever sounded. Hardcore fans will get the most out of this, but the spectacle is so audacious that even newcomers should have a blast with this one too.