BONGINATOR have been busy setting up The New England Death Metal Fun Time Bonanza that will be headlined by legendary MORTICIAN and promises total devastation as well as a headbanging neck-trauma after three days of nonstop moshing at Charleez Hill in Lebanon, ME, USA from June 27 to 29, 2025.
To promote the event, these weed smoking death metal maniacs release a video single for the new track ‘All Cops Are Biomechs’.
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BONGINATOR comment: “Do you remember that movie where like… the cop died and became part man part robot and then he was like a cool cop… robot… thing and then he like totally fought crime?”, guitarist and vocalist Erik Thorstenn innocently asks. “Yeah, we made a song about that. He’s the only cop we like, I guess. I bet, he would totally smoke you out if he caught you lighting it up under the bleachers and shit. Remember, when he shot that dude in the wiener? Anyway, go listen to the song, and hate-mosh a poser who likes fully human cops who steal your drugs and shit. And by the way, if you got some time to spare and want to hang out with us, just come to our three day Death Metal Fun Time Bonanza at Charleez Hill in Lebanon, ME at the end of June!”
KHNVM drop the video clip ‘Fetid Eden’ as the first single taken from their new full-length Cosmocrator. The fourth album of the German death metal act with Bangladeshi roots has been scheduled for release on August 29, 2025.
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KHNVM comment: “Our new single, ‘Fetid Eden’ is not merely music – but a visceral report from the heart of conflict”, singer and guitarist Obliterator explains. “This track plunges listeners into the brutal aftermath of war, where shattered dreams lie scattered like debris across ravaged landscapes, and the echoes of loss reverberate through the silence. This is a soundscape where the weight of existence is amplified by the relentless machinery of war and every breath is a struggle against the suffocating grip of despair. ‘Fetid Eden’ serves as a stark reminder of the enduring human cost of conflict, a descent into the gore-soaked reality that lies beyond the headlines. As the lead single of our upcoming album, it signals our unflinching commitment to confronting the darkest aspects of the human condition in a world consumed by violence.”
Portuguese death/thrash veterans Biolence are set to return with their fifth studio album titled, Violent Obliteration, due out on September 1st, 2025 via a triple-label collaboration between Doomed Records, Raging Planet, and Selvajaria Records.
Recorded and produced at Darkhammer Studios, who also oversaw all sound and visual elements, Violent Obliteration is described by the band as their most cohesive, direct, and violent record to date.
“This upcoming album is possibly our most cohesive, direct, and violent to date, a nuclear bomb of Death/Thrash Metal, with our signature lyrical themes such as the horrors of war, biological and mass destruction weapons, greed, human corruption, and its destructive impact on the planet,” says the band.
The first taste of chaos arrives with the premiere of a lyric video for the track ‘Pit of Degradation’, a punishing preview of what’s to come, featuring blistering riffs, razor-sharp drumming, and an atmosphere soaked in menace.
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.
DESERTED FEAR unleash the music video ‘At the End of Our Reign’ as the final advance single taken from their forthcoming new full-length Veins of Fire. The sixth studio album of Germany’s leading death metal act has been chalked up for release on April 25, 2025.
DESERTED FEAR comment: “The song ‘At the End of Our Reign’ describes a world that has reached the end of its existence through the failure of civilization”, guitarist Fabian Hildebrandt explains on behalf of the band. “It’s a final glance back before everything collapses and we are crushed by our own history – and we are all a part of this! We should ask ourselves, what do we want to leave behind?”
This is a release that’s certainly been a long time in coming: twelve years, in fact. Time flies when… life happens. Chaos Inception tore their way through two albums and then… they stopped. But now the Brazilian makers of supremely full-on black / death metal are making their return with eleven cuts of brutal, two-hundred-mile-per-hour, gnarly, grunty metal, charged with the most relentless riffs and no apologies.
Sometimes, words feel somewhat futile in the face of such a monster attack. As you find yourself gasping for breath and your heart racing – because music can be so much more than something you listen to, and can be something that you feel, and even if death metal isn’t something you’re drawn to, there’s something to appreciate in the blistering force of a release like this.
Vengeance Evangel is everything they promise when they write that ‘The music channels an intensity that transcends mere aggression, evoking a spirit of triumph from within its seemingly chaotic energy.’ The energy does, indeed, seem chaotic: every track presents a maelstrom of churning guitars, blistering blastbeats, double-pedal bass drum attack, raw-to-the-core – but making music this frenetic also requires immense discipline and technical ability, and this is something that perhaps escapes the casual listener, or the non-listener who skips it and dismisses it as just so much frenzied metal noise.
The intensity of the sonic assault is matched by the intensity of focus in the performance on Vengeance Evangel. The solo work on ‘Falsificator’ is absolutely wild, a complete fretboard frenzy, swerving between a blanket of rapidfire notes and virtuoso mania, crazed tapping and squealy notes all over, while the drumming is nothing less than a raging tempest that goes way beyond timekeeping and hits a different platform of exploding, beat-heavy attack.
They slow things considerably on the slugging, chugging, ‘La Niebla en el Cementerio Etrusco’, but while the chords are low and slow the percussion blasts away at twice the speed, and the contrast alone is utterly brain-melting, and that’s before you get to the gut-punching guitar and vocals dredged from the pits of hell.
The title track is perhaps one of the weakest, by virtue of its predictability, being rather death-by-numbers – or perhaps it’s simply because of the strength of the tracks it finds itself in company with.
The jolting explosion of ‘Ultima Exitium’ is fast and furious, and it feels as if they crank everything up a few notches on the second half of the album for a pounding, punishing, relentless assault, pulling out unexpected stops/starts, swerving tempo changes, eye-popping solos – it’s got the lot, and all delivered with heartstopping precision. Vengeance Evangel is monster of an album, and the level of detail within each composition is remarkable. No wonder it took twelve years.
ANTROPOMORPHIA unleash the sinister performance video ‘Cancerous Bane’ as the first single taken from their new full-length Devoid of Light. The sixth studio album of the Dutch death metal veterans has been scheduled for release on May 16, 2025.
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ANTROPOMORPHIA comment: “The first advance single ‘Cancerous Bane’ represents Devoid of Light well, although it is one of many faces that our forthcoming album shows”, frontman Ferry Damen writes. “The track opens with a ruthless maelstrom of riffs accompanied by violent wailing screams to set the tone. ‘Cancerous Bane’ refers to a path of spreading blackness, the waging of war against the betrayal of earthly flesh and its futile struggle against the timeless slumber.”
Yes, it’s ‘when’, not if, and since January 20th this year, it feels as if that crumbling which has been slowly emerging, first as a series of cracks, is now accelerating, to the point that we’re well on the way to almost certain collapse as Trump ‘the peacemaker’ puts his foot to the floor and hurtles us headlong toward self-extinction, one way or another. So after the ‘when’, the only question remaining is ‘how?’
While we ponder that, US interstate internet-based technical / experimental death metal act have delivered – after quite some time – their second EP. Having formed in 2015, it took them until 2022 to birth Manifestum I, following which singer Chrisom Infernium departed, being replaced by Shawn Ferrell. In the overall scheme of their career to date, When Society Crumbles has come together pretty quickly.
It’s overtly a concept work, centred around a fifteen-minute suite of three pieces which each address component aspects of ‘When Society Crumbles’ – ‘Infrastructure’, ‘Insight’, and ‘Inferiority Complex’. Well, ok.
The guitar parts alone contain about three hundred notes per minute, a frantic blanket of fretwork bursting from the very first bars. The vocals switch from growls to barks to howls to the squeals of wounded pigs, sometimes layered to occur simultaneously, while the drums blast away at a manic pace.
One thing that stands out from the first track alone is the production. Perhaps it’s the technical angle, perhaps it’s the circumstance of the recording, since being in a room and making noise is a very different experience from bouncing audio files around via Dropbox or whatever and adding to them in isolation. It’s not the clarity or separation per se, but the way the different instruments reverb – or don’t so much – in different ways. It isn’t that it sounds or feels cobbled together – it doesn’t – it just sounds different. But in a world where so much music is uniform, conformist, even if to supposedly alternative values, different stands out, and we need different. But the way that snare drum and the tom rolls cut through… they dominate in a way that’s rare, but it works: all too often with death – and black – metal – the drum dominate live, but are submerged on the recordings, reduced to a rattling clatter that’s more like the hyperfast clicking of a knitting machine than the thunderous blast of a drum kit being hammered hard. In places, it’s so technical as to border on the jazzy, although it’s clear they’re not just about technical prowess.
Not quite so different is the relentless fury the trio bring with the pounding percussion and frenzied picking: these elements are very much of the genre – death metal played with a real attention to technical detail. There are some well-considered tempo changes, and even some gentler, almost folk-inspired moments on ‘Insight’, where it drops down to some soft picking.
The three movements of ‘When Society Crumbles’ lurch into rabid dark territory on the third and final segment, where heavily processed vocals rip across a full-throttle all-out metal assault. The final track, the standalone ‘Every Last Soul Unmade’ is the longest by some margin, extending to almost six minutes and slamming down a tumultuous broadside of wildly noodling lead guitar over a bass that lands like a knee to the stomach. These guys know what they’re doing. I hope they keep doing it when civil war breaks out. I mean if, if…
Legendary Swedish death metallers Centinex unleashed their ‘As You Die’ single, accompanied by a music video. Featuring two brand-new tracks, the single carves out a fresh path for the band, infusing death ‘n’ roll fury while retaining their signature raw, aggressive extremity. These songs provide a glimpse into their highly anticipated 2025 album, set for release via Black Lion Records.
States Centinex bassist Martin Schulman: “Times change and so do Centinex. Our ‘As You Die’ single in a way represents a new beginning for the band, not only by working with new business partners but also by exploring a somewhat new musical direction.
“As previously mentioned, we have always been about not setting boundaries or limiting ourselves, and these two new tracks might be the clearest example of that. Maybe we are getting old or something, dunno… Anyway, let’s fu**ing rock!”
Watch the Video for ‘As You Die,’ here:
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Centinex originated in 1990 as a riff-oriented part of the classic Swedish death metal movement and disbanded in 2005 after releasing eight full-length albums. In 2014, they resurfaced, quite surprisingly, and with a refreshed line-up, delivered their celebrated come-back record, Redeeming Filth. The next album was inevitable and didn’t take another decade to assemble. Having released Doomsday Rituals in 2016, the band played a run of shows in Europe and North America, before encapsulating their sheer Swedish brutality on a new offering. Death In Pieces, the long-runner’s third reunion album, brims with a powerful dose of old-school, Stockholm-style death metal, pushing their signature heavy riffing to a new level of intensity. The Pestilence EP followed, representing a slight shift by incorporating old-school thrash influences and marking a new chapter in the band’s history.
Centinex embarked on a headlining European tour from May to July 2024. With their double-track single ‘As You Die’ released digitally on October 25 (and a physical release set for November 8), Centinex is gearing up to release their 12th full-length album in 2025 via Black Lion Records. Catch them live at Athens Extreme Festival on 15 December 2024.
Having just embarked on their European tour, RATS OF GOMORRAH also drop the video single ‘Swarming Death’, which is also the opening track of the German death metal duo’s forthcoming debut full-length Infectious Vermin. The album is scheduled for release on January 17, 2025.
RATS OF GOMORRAH comment: “This track is an amalgamation of everything that we have to offer: a lot of ‘blegh’, grooves, hard hitting drums, and a catchy chorus!”, frontman Daniel Stelling writes. “The lyrics of ‘Swarming Death’ spin a tale that began with the track ‘Rats of Gomorrah’ on the 2021 Oblitherion EP of our predecessor band Divide. It deals with no less than world domination!”
Check the video here:
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Here they come: a crawling, sprawling, gnawing mass of vicious rodents on a rampage. RATS OF GOMORRAH unleash their debut full-length "Infectious Vermin" onto a horrified world.
If the image of a malicious horde of rats does not give you the creeps, maybe the fact that "Infectious Vermin" is the result of the German duo’s frustration with the metal scene and its reluctance to any change does. No worries, although RATS OF GOMORRAH are averse to simply regurgitating all the tired clichés of an average death metal album, they have not completely abandoned that ship. They just took some detours into heavy and speed metal territory, kept vocal pitching varied, and added some hot spices such as crust-infused riffs and catchy choruses.
As with their previous releases, RATS OF GOMORRAH diabolically wrapped environmental, social, and even political issues into Lovecraftian horror themes. A gnawing feeling that there is a rat in everything does also persist. And for the first time, some lyrics are even intimate and personal.
RATS OF GOMORRAH are one of those bands that have a much longer story behind them than their emergence under that name suggests. Strictly speaking the German duo only crawled out of their hole with a new rodent moniker in 2023. Yet they also started out with over a decade of death metal experience under their pelt.
Guitarist and vocalist Daniel Stelling and Moritz Paulsen on drums had already been a part of the internationally active Northern German death metal trio DIVIDE since 2009, which had become a duo in 2016. In this formation the musicians that have claimed BOLT THROWER, CARCASS, and VADER as major sources of influence managed to establish an excellent name in the death metal underground. In fact their standing in this scene grew to such an extent that DIVIDE was able to tour not only throughout all of Europe, but also in Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and even in India. In 2022, they even won the German competition of the Wacken Metal Battle and were awarded a slot at the largest and most famous metal festival of this planet.
Despite their legacy and all the hard work that it took to establish their name, the duo was not content to remain within the limitations of their stylistic mould. Although they stayed true to death metal, they already started to make their music more rough and dirty, expanded their horizon with elements from black, thrash and other influences from extreme music, and even added a healthy dose of weirdness. Out of respect for their previous works and acknowledging the changes, the two Germans decided to change the band name to RATS OF GOMORRAH. As befits such rodent vermin, you may expect deep growls, thrash-infused riffs, blast beats and of course: rat-like shrieks!
Hopefully, by now there is an itchy feeling on your skin, and rustling noises from behind your walls, while a sense of dread and panic is spreading. The best antidote: blast Infectious Vermin on ten – and never a rat will you ever see more. Well, maybe a neighbour or four knocking on your door. So what?! Tell them all that RATS OF GOMORRAH rule supreme!
Aural Aggravation 