Portuguese heavy sludge hitters Vaneno have just dropped the official video for ‘Sludgehammer’, the crushing second single from their forthcoming album Chaos, Hostility, Murder, due out May 26 on Raging Planet Records.
Shot in black and white, ‘Sludgehammer’ embodies everything Vaneno stands for: heavy, unrelenting riffs, cavernous grooves, and a primal energy that feels like it could destroy entire brick walls. The track delivers a punishing blend of sludge, stoner, and death metal, the kind of sound that grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go.
KAYO DOT have revealed the video single ‘Oracle by Severed Head’ taken from their forthcoming new album Every Rock, Every Half-Truth under Reason, which is scheduled for release on August 1, 2025.
Watch it here:
AA
KAYO DOT comment: “The song ‘Oracle by Severed Head’ is about prophecy, but not the clean, transcendent kind that we’ve been taught to expect”, mastermind Toby Driver reveals. “This is prophecy as defilement – a sacred voice ripped from the past and forced through a severed head – a voice no longer truly its own, but distorted, fragmented, bleeding into the present. It is a song that interrogates the ways in which manipulated versions of the past continue to invade the present, asserting themselves in violent ways. These voices might be real and they might speak some truths, but who, through the obscene fracture that brought them back, are we really listening to? And at what cost? Musically, ‘Oracle by Severed Head’ pulls us into that space of rupture. It is built on a large ensemble – guitars, drums, bass, strings, woodwinds, trumpet, and vocals – an orchestration that calls back to the earliest Kayo Dot works. The song is a perfect choice for a first single, as it celebrates our return to form while marking the passing of time since ‘Choirs of the Eye’. The music is expansive but controlled, allowing tension and release to breathe in real time. Its beauty is at odds with its plaintiveness, as aching melodies and delicate harmonies evoke a sense of loss and longing. The climaxes feel inevitable, yet somehow unexpected. In these moments, the music mirrors the emotional intensity of our most powerful moments, but also speaks to the underlying disquiet of the present – trapped between what was and what is yet to come.”
dälek share a new track ‘The Essence’ ahead of European tour dates this May. The experimental hip-hop pioneers are currently in the studio working on their follow up to Precipice and have given fans a taste of what’s to come in this new single.
“The Essence is a window to where me and Mike are at right now. We quite literally took it back to the essence on this joint. Straight up me on the MPC 3000 and Mike on Processed guitar, playing off of each other as we created the track. Lyrics and flow are central to the joint and dictated the direction of the production and how we sculpted the arrangement.
As always there are layers to the meaning but I also wanted to be crystal clear on what I was spitting. There are minimal to no overdubs. We somehow kept the heavy “wall of sound” feel but stripped away superfluous layers to just the parts and pieces that were needed to complete this as a “dälek” song. This is just a taste of what is coming.” – Dälek
The lyrics of ‘The Essence’ are full of defiance and energy, something which the band will no doubt bring to their live shows; "We had civilizations interconnected throughout history/Our art and architecture composed with sacred symmetry/I’m seeing these past lives vividly/Refuse to let them kill our joy wit bigotry."
dälek live 2025:
May 20th – Berlin, DE – Neue Zukunft May 21st – Vilnius, LT – Kirtimai Cultural Center May 22nd – Tallinn, EE – Paavli Kultuurivabrik May 23rd – Helsinki, FI – Sonic Rites Festival May 24th – Budapest, HU – Instant-Fogas May 26th – Prague, CZ – Palac Akropolis May 27th – Brno, CZ – Kabinet Muz May 28th – Vienna, AT – Flucc
UK death/grindcore act COFFIN MULCH released the new EP In Dub on May 2nd via At War With False Noise. The EP sees Coffin Mulch collaborating with MICK HARRIS – Napalm Death legendary drummer until 1990’s Harmony Corruption album – who remixed two tracks from the British band for the occasion!
They write:
This is kinda neither a death metal record, nor an industrial record, nor a techno record. I don’t know what it is, and that’s what’s cool about it. We live in a world where most folks seem to want to find their niche and exist in that, and it wasn’t sitting right constantly just being thought of as “an HM2 band” I guess. I’d imagine this will probably split a lot of people, but it might gain us some new followers! Honestly, that’s pretty secondary to the thrill of getting to work with one of my heroes and create something that’s turned out to be a really unique, challenging, and DIFFERENT record.
Brooklyn hardcore outfit Cash Bribe are back with a vengeance, unveiling their third EP Demonomics on June 13, 2025, via Futureless. This marks the band’s debut release with the label, and they’ve never sounded more vicious, precise, or relentless.
The EP’s title track, ‘Demonomics’, is now streaming everywhere—an absolute sonic assault that sets the tone for what’s to come.
There are two kinds of heavy bands: the ones that make a lot of noise and the ones that drag you somewhere you didn’t know you needed to go. Cwfen (pronounced ‘Coven’) are the latter, and Sorrows is a record that doesn’t just crush – it haunts long after the final note.
The allure of Cwfen’s sound lies in contrasts: the glacial ferocity of Amenra, with the velvet-and-razor vocals of King Woman, and the rotting grandeur of Type O Negative. It’s as hypnotic as it is harrowing, but somehow even better than the sum of those parts.
Since emerging from Glasgow’s underground just 18 months ago, Cwfen have built a solid reputation, selling out shows and pulling growing audiences into their doom-laden fever dream. Released in October, the band’s debut single ‘Reliks’ was a hit with fans and critics, landing a spot on Kerrang!‘s release of the week playlist. And rightly so. Their sound devours and delights in equal measure. And people are craving more.
Today sees the band share new single ‘Bodies’ with vocalist and rhythm guitarist Agnes Alder stating,
“Bodies was one of the first songs I’d written for Cwfen. I’d gone through a period of significant change in my life and had burned out to the point of caring a lot less about things that had previously been important to me when I was younger. As I was writing, I’d imagined this sort of vast, feminine cosmic horror. Sort of the opposite of what women are supposed to be. And I had this thought: what if, instead of being told to stay small and keep producing, a woman took up the biggest space possible and just… consumed? Almost a black-hole-sized matriarch hoovering up everything until there was nothing left. It was fun to think about this sort of monstrous feminine presence that can’t be stopped. So the song was sort of an exploration of those feelings, a catharsis of sorts. And permission to be terrifying.”
Listen to ‘Bodies’ now:
Upcoming shows including UK tour dates with Faetooth:
Norwegian post-rock outfit Korean Cars return with ‘Magalomaniac’, the second single from their debut mini-album #1, set to be released on May 23 via Mas-Kina Recordings.
Following the haunting and immersive lead single ‘Drömtorp’, this new single turns the dial from introspection to tension as “Magalomaniac” is a slow-burning eruption of cinematic builds, distorted beauty, and emotional urgency.
Blending melancholic post-rock with melodic post-hardcore, Korean Cars create a dynamic soundscape where atmospheric depth meets raw emotional release. Drawing from the alternative and post-hardcore scenes of the ’90s and 2000s, the band’s sound fuses soaring melodies, jagged noise, and unpredictable shifts into a captivating experience.
Formed by members of Rumble in Rhodos, Infidels Forever, Arms on Fire, and Insense, Korean Cars combine seasoned musicianship with a shared passion for layered, emotionally charged songwriting. Their sound echoes the cinematic textures of Explosions in the Sky and the emotional punch of Trail of Dead — a beautiful chaos of melody and intensity.
It’s been a couple years since we last heard new material from Harold Nono, enigmatic purveyor of weirdy electronica, and platformed by the go-to label for weirdy folky worldy electronica, Bearsuit Records. And Faro is suitably strange, and, well, Bearsuity.
It doesn’t start out so: ‘Raukar’ is primarily sedate, piano-led, sedate, strolling, and overall, feels quite calming, despite jangles and scrapes of dissonance whispering away in the background. As the ambience trickles its way into balmy abstraction, we feel a sense of discomfort, and while the expansive ‘Sketch for Faro’ is soothing, expansive, cinematic, and feels like it could easily be an excerpt from Jurassic Park or another sweeping passage from a big-budget family-friendly movie, there are undercurrents which are subtle but nevertheless discernible which add an element of ‘otherness’ to it, particularly the abstract, almost choral vocal which rises near the end.
An EP consisting of only four tracks, Faro is a brief document, but Nono brings together many elements within this succinct work. Besides, it’s not all about length, right? Faro is sonically rich, imaginative, and ambitious in scope and scale. It feels expansive, transporting the listener over huge landscapes of trees and hills and field and planes, and you kinda feel carried away on it all in a largely pleasant way, despite the niggles of tension which creep in. And during ‘The Hour of The Wolf’ everything begins to explode and expand like some kind of galactic simulation, and suddenly, from nowhere, there are beats are blasts of distortion and everything somehow crumbles, and as silence falls, you find yourself standing, dazed, amidst rubble and ruins wondering what just happened.
While many of the elements common to Nono’s work are present here, Faro does seem like something of a development, expending in the direction of 2023’s ‘Sketch for Strings’ and moving further from the more disjointed, collagey compositional forms of earlier works. It’s less overtly jarring, less conspicuously weird, but don’t for a second think that Nono has gone normal on us – because Faro is subtle in the way it unsettles, and the last couple of minutes completely rupture the atmosphere forged gently and carefully over the rest of the EP. And this is why it’s both classic Nono and quintessential Bearsuit – because whatever your expectations, it is certain to confound them.
AZURE EMOTE drop the video clip ‘Feast of Leeches’ as the first single taken from their new full-length Cryptic Aura. The fourth studio album of the American progressive death alchemists has been scheduled for release on July 25, 2025.
AZURE EMOTE comment: “The first single ‘Feast of Leeches’ is a frantic release of anger and madness”, mastermind Mike Hrubovcak writes. “For far too long have we suffered the pressure of outside vultures feeding off our personal energies. It’s fitting that this video was created by ‘Drain Hope’, because it visually expresses the frustration of being surrounded by leeches and parasites that are sucking on our lifeblood, while leaving us ultimately drained and lethargic. It’s like suffocating under dirt but still crawling through the mud in hopes of getting out. We are all waiting to breathe, but always holding our breath, and continually striving to be, while awaiting our death.”
Here’s something of a curio… ‘PolarForest’ by Anja Huwe / Xmal Deutschland.
A saturnine mashup of Xmal’s 1987 track ‘Polarlicht’ and Anja Huwe’s ‘Living In The Forest’ from her 2024 album Codes, the single reinvigorates the binding of Anja’s past to her future.
‘Polarlicht’ explores the enchanting beauty of the northern lights, with Anja’s vocals repetitively calling “scheine, scheine,” emphasizing the hypnotic nature of the Aurora Borealis. Contrasted with Anja’s stronger vocals of ‘Living In The Forest,’ the theme and lyrics of the track bring melancholy and subliminal aggression and anger to the mix.
The single is accompanied by a music video which features Huwe’s stunning visual art alongside sequences from the art and dance project COAX, ARCHETYPE, formed by internationally renowned choreographer and performing artist Rica Blunck and multi-talented artist Nicolas Anatol Baginsky.
Aural Aggravation 