Following a record breaking Redux Kickstarter campaign, the first single taken from the forthcoming Magnetic Eye Records Redux Series release The Downward Spiral Redux is ready to be unleashed: Seattle, WA grunge metal trio SANDRIDER present their hard-hitting take on the NINE INCH NAILS classic ‘March of the Pigs’. This highly anticipated new Redux Series instalment is scheduled for release on November 28, 2025.
SANDRIDER comment: “Our choice for a tribute track, ‘March of the Pigs’, is a song that hits so hard”, vocalist and guitarist Jon Weisnewski writes. “It did when it first came out, it still does now, and it’ll be just as brutal in another 30 years. Trying to harness that beast and make sure that it still had the timeless impact, we all expect it to have, was a humbling challenge.”
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Parallel to The Downward Spiral Redux, Magnetic Eye Records will release their customary companion album entitled Best of Nine Inch Nails Redux that contains 13 cover renditions of deep cuts and all-time classics from across NINE INCH NAILS’ catalogue recorded by some of the heavy underground’s most exciting artists.
NYC singer-songwriter Jessie Kilguss presents her latest single ‘Howard Johnson’s’, previewing her sixth album They Have A Howard Johnson’s There, with an era-inspired nostalgic video by Deborah Magocsi. This album was engineered, produced, mixed and mastered by Charlie Nieland (Debbie Harry, Rufus Wainwright, Blondie, Scissor Sisters) at Saturation Point Studios in Brooklyn.
For this single, Kilguss is accompanied by John Kengla (David Byrne, Ben Kweller, Serena Ryder) on guitar, bass and keys, Rob Heath (Madison Square Gardeners, Julia Nunes) on drums and percussion, and Dave Derby (The Dambuilders, Gramercy Arms, Lloyd Cole) and Charlie Nieland on backing vocals. Other tracks on this album features Andrea Longato (Duncan Shiek, Jeremy Jordan, Alphonso Ribeiro), guitarist Kirk Schoenherr (Tegan and Sara, Elle King, Chet Faker), and Rembert Block (Rembert and the Basic Goodness).
“This song originated from some writing I did in a poetry workshop with performance artist Karen Finley. I had seen her read at the fantastic On The Verge Festival, which celebrates women artists of all disciplines at the Wild Project, produced and curated by my friend Heather Litteer. I was drawn to Karen’s writing and saw a post of hers on Instagram advertising an online poetry workshop inspired by the movie Dog Day Afternoon, as well as dogs in general. I had never taken a poetry workshop before but I am a huge dog lover and thought “what the hell”. I like pushing myself out of my comfort zone,” says Jessie Kilguss.
“In the movie, Al Pacino is speaking with his lover about what he’ll do to prove his love and he says something like “I’ll charter a plane to Algeria. They have a Howard Johnson’s there”. It stood out to me because it was so ridiculous and also, my father Howard had passed away a month earlier. So the song is a tribute to my father, Howard Kilguss, and is also inspired by Dog Day Afternoon. My father had a deep connection with dogs, so I thought it was even more appropriate to write this song for him".
Darkwave band, RELIGION OF HEARTBREAK delivers Lunate, a four-track EP blending detached romanticism with pounding EBM rhythms.
Mikal Shapiro and Dedric Moore perfect their dark disco formula across tracks like "Love Tourniquet" and "100 Degrees," creating ideal soundtracks for fog-drenched nightclubs. Desire becomes ritual and heartbreak transforms into dancefloor salvation.
The EP moves from intense desire to late night reflections replicating a night on the town filled with highs and lows and back. It is an honest look at the thrill of our night club experiences that end in reflection of what could have been.
As a taster, they’ve released a visualizer for the title track. Check it here:
AZURE EMOTE drop a new lyric video for the track ‘Into Abysmal Oblivion’ that features guest solos by James Murphy and Andy La Rocque. The song is taken from the current full-length Cryptic Aura, which was released on July 25, 2025. Cryptic Aura is the fourth studio album of the American progressive death alchemists.
AZURE EMOTE comment: “This song is about the ghosts of past generations that came before us, scrambling to navigate this labyrinth called life, all while tumbling towards the same forgotten oblivion we face today”, mastermind Mike Hrubovcak states. “Eventually, all the memories of anything we hold onto so passionately will be erased and forgotten to the abyss of time.”
Eville have come to be regulars here at Aural Aggravation. We rate them highly, and we rate their latest single, ‘No Pictures Please’, from their forthcoming debut EP Brat Metal, out next month. Check it here:
FAUNA drop an excerpt from the epic over 23-minute long song ‘Eternal Return’ as the third and final advance single taken from the forthcoming album Ochre & Ash. The Cascadian black metal duo’s fourth full-length has been slated for release on September 26, 2025.
FAUNA comment: “Journeying everward, through this nothingness comprised of all that has ever been and all that will ever be, we see”, vocalist, guitarist, and bass player Echtra writes on behalf of the duo. “World creates awareness and awareness creates world, collapsing the very self that knows in its moment of knowing. And in that gnosis becomes whole again. And thus we are born anew from nothingness. Come and become, life eats itself, womb and tomb combined. Fecund chaos, sickening soup of morass and murk, birth and rebirth; the void vomits its entrails forth, they coalesce into form, and swim off into the bog.”
Ochre & Ash is the title of the fourth full-length from Cascadian black metal shamans FAUNA. Ochre and ash are also two of the main ingredients used by ancient humans to create paintings in caves. The album cover combines these two aspects by using an image from the Cueva de las Manos ("Cave of the Hands") in Argentina, where the oldest hands stencilled onto the rock date back to about 7,300 BC.
The oldest cave paintings date back over 60,000 years, which puts them into the age of two older members of the human family tree, Neanderthals and Denisovans. When modern humans or homo sapiens emerged out of Africa, they mixed with their predecessors and continued to use ochre and ash to paint images in caves.
FAUNA are animist ministers who take listeners and participants in their live rituals back to the origins of our species, to an age of hunters and gatherers and archaic human spirituality. Ochre & Ash is conceived as a shamanic underworld journey, a process of ritual death, harrowing passage through unknown realms, and rebirth into new form.
Although Ochre & Ash looks like a regular album with six tracks at a superficial glance, it is in fact intended as one whole piece that is divided into three ‘songs’, which are interspersed with ambient interludes. This follows a distinct shamanic sequence: preparation for death and then the moment of death, descent to the underworld, a passage through the lands below, and the painful rebirth into a morass of Being.
The concept of Ochre & Ash reaches all the way back to the founding purpose of FAUNA. This musical entity came into being in Olympia, Washington in 2004, when a spiritual drive to explore shamanism and atavism, which means the reemergence of traits thought to be lost from human biology and culture, birthed itself in the creation of black metal fury.
FAUNA were formed as an antidote to the alienation of the modern human spirit and dedicated to cultivating lost channels of the human condition. Musically, FAUNA soon evolved into an integral and inspirational part of the sonic revolution now known as Cascadian black metal, alongside and in creative exchange with legends such as AGALLOCH and WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM.
FAUNA view their music as a collection of experience and ritual, intended to shake free the contemporary mind and bring listeners back to a more primal and free existence. They consider live rites as the true main event. These live rituals evolved into recorded echoes simply out of necessity. FAUNA desired to open their work to those who might seek it, and to share their passion for a return to primal spiritual states with people outside of the damp, vast forests of the Pacific Northwest of Cascadia. FAUNA’s debut album Rain (2006) shared the story of homo sapiens’ evolutionary path, and our struggle to survive in the modern world. 2007’s The Hunt explores another stage in that human trajectory through the lens of a mythic hunt, followed by Avifauna in 2012 – with the title paying tribute to birds and the spiritual meaning these winged cousins provide.
With Ochre & Ash, FAUNA take their listeners on a shamanic journey back deep in time into an age of early hunters and gatherers with a black metal ritual that echoes ancient humans assembling at torchlight in dark caves to spray-paint hands, animals, and tools through hollow bone pipes with ochre and ash in an act of magic onto the bare bones of the earth.
Wisconsin’s industrial death metallers CRAWL dropped a new lyric video for the song ‘No Way Out’, taken from the album with the same name released on June 27th via THC: Music/Virgin Music Group.
Pioneering Midwestern Industrial-Metal act CRAWL initially formed in 1989 in Green Bay, WI, under their original moniker, Nothing Sacred. They recorded several well-received demos, before changing their name to BLEED. The band released its seminal EP Womb in 1993, marking a violent stylistic shift for the band, moving heavily into the realm of Industrial-Death Metal.
Showcasing bombastic drum machines coupled with grotesque samples, synthetic bass, ferociously growled vocals, and an ultra-modern down-tuned progressive thrash sensibility, making the band an immediate standout in the Glam/Grunge era of the early 90’s. Bleed quickly became a major draw throughout the Midwest, performing multiple times at the legendary Milwaukee Metal Fest, and becoming the go-to opening act for major Death and Industrial acts coming through Wisconsin, sharing stages with the likes of Godflesh, Entombed, Malevolent Creation, Grave, and many more.
After signing to Olympic Records in 1994, the band changed their name to CRAWL, unleashing the classic LP Earth, showcasing a brutal industrial edge, married with innovative tunings and time signatures. CRAWL quickly found a niche in the burgeoning Industrial-Alt-Metal scene, with the rise of bands like Godflesh, Entombed, Prong, Pitchshifter, and Fear Factory, receiving glowing reviews from top Metal mags like Metal Maniacs. Crawl would follow-up Earth with Construct, Destroy, Rebuild, their first and only release without Danz, who exited the band at the end of the Earth cycle. Featuring several songs co-written with Danz prior to his departure, DeJardin assumed lead vocal duties for Construct, Destroy, Rebuild, and the corresponding touring, showcasing a more stripped-down, hardcore approach to the band’s sound, reflective of the burgeoning underground post-hardcore and nu-metal scenes rapidly developing at the time.
CRAWL stayed active for the better part of 2 years supporting the album, including several dates on the ‘97 Vans Warped Tour with Blink 182, Limp Bizkit, Social Distortion, and tons more, as well as tours alongside Acumen Nation, 20 Dead Flower Children, and more. After a successful run in support of the latest album, the band went on an indefinite hiatus that would last for almost two decades.
In 2018, the band reconnected with fellow Green Bay native and record industry executive Thom Hazaert, president of THC: Music, then managing the relaunched COMBAT RECORDS with former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson, who would go on to reissue Womb in 2019. The band would reunite with the classic line-up of Danz, DeJardin, Pantzlaff, Kabacinski along with drummer Josh Hovland for a handful of live shows. This included several dates supporting Ellefson and Hazaert and their band ELLEFSON, Taproot, and more.
Now, 35 years out from the band’s formation, CRAWL prepares to unleash their latest Industrial-Metal masterpiece No Way Out. The band’s first studio LP in almost 30 years, in stores June 27th 2025 via THC MUSIC/Virgin Music Group. With a sound that is instantly recognizable to fans of the band and remains true to the band’s groundbreaking Industrial-Metal roots, CRAWL sounds as relevant in 2025, as they did in 1995.
Hailed as a “hardcore Toxic Holocaust,” Wellington’s Brainwave channel the grit of Drain, Mindforce, and Forced Order into a thrashing, metallic hardcore attack all their own. After years of cementing their reputation as one of New Zealand’s most ferocious live bands, the five-piece now take the next step with their debut full-length Ill Intent, arriving October 22, 2025.
Recently, the band have dropped a new video for the album’s title track ‘Ill Intent’, featuring guest vocals from Luke Manson of Xile. The track exemplifies the record’s dual spirit, deeply personal yet politically charged, raging with both despair and defiance.
“It’s an extremely personal record, albeit one set against the backdrop of a world tearing itself apart. It’s about hopelessness, the pain of loss, and the brutality of everyday life. But it’s also about conquering the summit, overcoming both yourself and your detractors,” the band shares.
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The making of Ill Intent marked a turning point for Brainwave. They grew from a four- to five-piece with the addition of guitarist Ian Moore, forged a close production partnership with Lewis Noke-Edwards, and invited some key figures from New Zealand’s hardcore scene, including members of Lucre, Molosser, Martial Law, and Xile. The result is a ten-track album that captures both the personal and the political, a raw, unflinching document of struggle, but also a rallying cry to fight back.
Portuguese grindcore masters BESTA return this autumn with their fiercest work to date. Their reimagined album John Carpenter Redux will be released October 4th via Raging Planet in an exclusive limited vinyl edition.
Originally unleashed in 2013 and mixed by Steve Austin (Today Is The Day), the record has now been completely re-mixed and reimagined by the band itself, with long-time frontman Paulo Rui re-recording all vocals to deliver the most unhinged and powerful version yet.
As the ultimate homage to the master of horror, John Carpenter Redux bridges feral grindcore and politically charged punk, channeling the same tension, anger, and resistance that fuel many of Carpenter’s timeless films. The result is raw, uncompromising, and urgent, a soundtrack to chaos that feels both cinematic and confrontational.
This is BESTA at their fiercest: a band with over a decade of grinding, raging, and raging against the system, now paying tribute to one of cinema’s most visionary rebels.
French black/death metal entity Bliss of Flesh has dropped the ‘The Awakening,’ accompanied by a gripping music video, as the first preview from their forthcoming fifth record, Metempsychosis — Life or the Pact with Death (EN). The most introspective entry in Bliss of Flesh’s discography, this album, scheduled for 17 October 2025 via Black Lion Records on CD, vinyl, and digital, continues the band’s tradition of weaving music into vast conceptual frameworks. Metempsychosis is defined as the transmigration of the soul after death from one body to another.
Of ‘The Awakening,’ Bliss of Flesh explains: “This piece expresses the moment when the individual becomes aware of their state and the new environment revealed to them, imbued with decrepitude and fatalism. ‘The Awakening’ is an introspective monologue between the individual and the inner forces that drive and consume them, allowing them to transcend themselves and finally overcome the fatality that gnaws at them, to bargain and seal the pact that will allow them to regain control of their existence at the twilight of this new life.”
UPCOMING LIVE APPEARANCES Gorgoroth “33-Year Anniversary Tour 2025 Part II” – Northern Europe w/ Carved Memories, Shemhamforash 16.10.2025 – Roskilde, DEN / Gimle 17.10.2025 – Flensburg, GER / Roxy Concerts 18.10.2025 – Malmö, SWE / Plan B 19.10.2025 – Göteborg, SWE / Monument 20.10.2025 – Stockholm, SWE / Kollektivet Livet 22.10.2025 – Jyväskylä, FIN / Lutakko 23.10.2025 – Helsinki, FIN / Anniwalli 25.10.2025 – Tallinn, EST / Tapper Club 26.10.2025 – Riga, LAT / Melna Piektdiena
Festival Appearances: 14.11.2025 – Metal Earth Fest, Brest, FR 07.02.2026 – Douceur Noire Fest, Crosne, FR
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