Unique Leader US Vinyl & CDs

Review: Following on from last year's crushing debut full-length, 'The Codex Of Flesh', Colorado Springs deathcore new schoolers, Crown Magnetar, return with the visceral 'Alone In Death' EP. Combining all facets of the genre from the brutally heavy to the obscenely technical, their myriad cacophony careens with zero warning into obliterating blast beats, mammoth breakdowns and caustic, malevolent shrieks. For a subgenre once so maligned and snobbed, it's releases like this that serve as testament to the vitality and staying power of such a twisted hybrid.

Review: An extremely tehchnical tech-death metal gem from French-Canadian band First Fragment. If there's any metal that 'Gloire Eternelle' deals in, it's mercury, because this band, since their formation in 2007, have always treated the genre with infinite malleability, wafting their talent for double-kicks and solos about the room like an inescapable gas. Even touches of flamenco and neoclassical epic storytelling touch on this wholly instrumental odyssey, which you can now catch for the first time in 'gold splattered' 2xLP form since its initial digital release.

Review: Massachuessetts symphonic deathcore brutalisers, Worm Shepherd, made quite the statement of intent with 2020's 'In the Wake ov Sol'. On their sophomore effort, however, it now becomes abundantly clear just how much expansive venom the group have been harbouring. 'Ritual Hymns' builds upon its preceding debut with obliterating breakdowns, complex, frosted melodics and a weary, theatrical sense of nihilism that elevate epic centrepieces such as, 'Blood Kingdom' and 'A Bird In The Dusk' to a level of spectacle only tangentially approach on their debut.