Norway’s grindcore mavericks Beaten To Death are back with another perfectly reasonable contribution to extreme music: a song called ‘Fuck the Moon’.
The new single is the latest taste of the band’s seventh full-length, Vntrve, due October 23 via Mas-Kina Recordings, and follows the wonderfully deranged ‘Sunburnt Satanist’ and saxophone-assisted ‘The Tolerator’.
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Following releases such as Xes and Strokes, Last Maar, Ik Verhuis Naar Het Bos, and Sunrise Over Rigor Mortis, Beaten To Death remain as restless and inventive as ever. Vntrve embraces everything that has made them one of Norway’s most distinctive extreme acts: blistering speed, sharp songwriting, unexpected twists, and an irreverent spirit that refuses to take itself, or the genre, too seriously.
The result is another album that captures the essence of Beaten To Death: grindcore only in the loosest sense of the word, equal parts ferocious, inventive, hilarious, and completely unhinged. Sixteen years on, they’re still proving that the best way to honour the genre is to ignore its rulebook entirely.
Vntrve is out October 23. Pre-orders will be announced soon.
New Jersey industrial project ELEKTRIKILL, led by musician and producer Steve Vil, has officially released Macabre Masquerade – their second full length album of 2026 through Evol Music Group. The 13-track Halloween album is constructed as a continuous celebration of everything lurking in the dark.
ELEKTRIKILL invites listeners into a celebration where the witching hour never ends, transforming Halloween horror into a relentless collision of industrial rhythms, dark electronics, monsters, and macabre humor.
Macabre Masquerade combines brand-new material with reworked ELEKTRIKILL songs, terrifying interludes, and remixes from Kill Vector, Kontrol Phreak, and SPKTR. Rather than simply assembling a collection of horror-themed tracks, ELEKTRIKILL sequences the album like one long infernal party—complete with vampires, demons, werewolves, parasites, restless ghosts, and enough industrial machinery to wake the dead.
Macabre Masquerade moves between pounding EBM, darkwave atmosphere, industrial-rock aggression, electronic dance rhythms, and cinematic horror. The result is sinister without becoming joyless, balancing menace with enough twisted humor and dancefloor energy to keep the party moving long after the cemetery gates have closed.
Check the video for ‘Parasite (Darkest Fear Mix by Kontrol Phreak)’ from the album here:
US-based rising instrumental progressive metallers, Sometime In February, are excited to release a brand new track titled ‘Nightlight’. Coming off the back of a string of Summer US live dates, the track is an exciting taste of what is to come. Check it here:
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Tristan Auman comments: “’Nightlight’ was written in a headspace similar to our 2024 single ‘Hiding Place.’ While in the trenches of writing our next record, we wanted to stretch our legs and write something free from the bounds of a bigger picture, and lean into styles that we may only dip our toes into. For this single, it was early-2010s era progressive metal/djent, something we appreciate but usually avoid when writing. In true SIF fashion, it also includes fun and upbeat highs, melodramatic lows, and singable hooks that might make you forget we’re an instrumental band.”
In 2023, the band introduced themselves with their first single under InsideOut, titled ‘Hiding Place’, which showcased their melodic approach. Now, with a full album of new material, Sometime in February presents 11 captivating tracks, from the fusion-metal opener ‘Palantir’ to the progressive complexity of ‘Outside In’ to the blues-infused, prog-metal closer ‘Funeral House.’
The trio’s connections extend into the progressive music world, featuring collaborations with Between the Buried and Me members Paul Waggoner and Dan Briggs. Tristan had been working for Waggoner in a local coffee shop. After getting to know Tristan, he went to see the band and was impressed by their live performance. He later invited Auman to fill in alongside Paul on BTBAM gigs. In return, Waggoner contributed to the track ‘The Bad Fight’ and appeared in the music video. “I had a part open for him on the song,” Auman recalls. "He sent over some ideas, and they were perfect, as expected."
Briggs added a unique touch, playing textural elements and additional instruments like mandolin, rather than bass. The BTBAM connection also extended to the album’s mixing, handled by engineer Jamie King, who previously worked with Scott’s former band, Trees on Mars. “Tristan knew right away he wanted to work with Jamie, and I was all for it,” Scott says. “Jamie was great in the studio with a positive vibe the whole time.”
To enhance the album’s sound design, the band brought in Eric Guenther, keyboardist for The Contortionist. “We discussed sound design, and The Contortionist was at the top of our list,” Morgan explains. “Eric was our first choice, and he was on board right away. He had seen Tristan on the BTBAM tour, and he elevated the entire project with his contributions.”
For Tristan, Where Mountains Hide represents a step forward, with an uplifting and optimistic feel. “For this album, I wanted the songs to stand alone more, instead of making everything flow together like typical prog albums. But in the end, it naturally felt cohesive. The album has a grand and fantastical vibe, and with instrumental music, it can be challenging to create a specific atmosphere, but that’s what I aimed for.”
Across nine songs, the Kill Devil Hills quartet balances post-hardcore urgency, shoegaze bliss, and guitar-driven catharsis. Recorded and produced by J. Robbins (War on Women, Mary Timony), Year of the Horse preserves the raw chemistry that defines the band while pushing their songwriting into sharper, more immediate territory.
‘Blind Smile’, the track described by Loud Women as “bright, melodic and eccentric” now has a music video. About the video, Dawn says, “The video is about someone stuck in a world of complacency. It’s her journey to break free and show color to the world around her. Much like the meaning of the song it’s about being your true self.”
“The blind man smile, the deaf laugh for all to hear, to be so brave, you can’t hear anyone.”
Adelaide sludge merchants Sundowner are back, and things haven’t gotten any prettier.
Three years after Lysergic Ritual dragged listeners through a feedback-soaked wasteland of nihilism and decay, the Australian quartet have announced their third full-length, Cesspool, due out October 15 via Melbourne’s Disdain Records.
The band are offering the first taste of the album with ‘Intoxication Blues’, a filthy, swaggering slab of NOLA-inspired sludge accompanied by a brand-new visualizer.
Built around poisoned blues riffs, suffocating grooves, walls of feedback and a thick layer of distortion, ‘Intoxication Blues’ provides an appropriately nasty introduction to an album designed to soundtrack a world going up in flames.
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Cesspool sees Sundowner take the caustic, slow-burning sludge that has defined them since their 2021 debut Guns, Knives and Tyre Irons and push it into even more punishing territory across ten new tracks.
The band explain: “Cesspool continues on with our brand of sludge, further melding influences from the classic ’90s pioneers of the genre through our own lens out of Adelaide, South Australia.”
For Sundowner, that lineage has always been clear. The poisoned blues of Eyehategod, the ugliness of Iron Monkey and Buzzov-en, and the smoke-filled grooves of Weedeater remain embedded in their DNA. But Cesspool isn’t interested in simply recreating the past. Instead, those influences are fed through Sundowner’s own distinctly Australian strain of hostility.
The album also sees Sundowner reunite with the production team behind Lysergic Ritual. After handling virtually everything themselves during the band’s early years, Sundowner brought Jason Fuller of Goatsound Studios into the fold to mix their second album, with Dav Byrne of Iridium Audio handling mastering.
“We went with the same production team as our last album, but pushed everything further for a more punishing and abrasive sound,” says the band.
Across its ten tracks, Cesspool doubles down on everything Sundowner do best: filthy blues, crushing grooves, abrasive riffs and pure sludge-soaked hostility. It’s heavier, nastier and more punishing, without straying from the band’s uncompromising roots.
Belgium’s most unpredictable noise-rock troublemakers 30,000 Monkies have premiered their new single .Unsound Hero’.
Taken from the band’s forthcoming album Super Rebound, due September 18 via Fvn Kvlt Records, ‘Unsound Hero’ trades instant impact for a six-minute descent into tension, melancholy and crushing sludge.
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The band explains: “‘Unsound Hero’ is about almost wandering off to the dark side when hostile forces keep pushing all the wrong buttons. Unlike a lot of other tracks on the album, this one starts with a slow-burning intro. We had fun layering some deep melodic vocals with uncanny, autotuned choirs, trying to increase the tension with every added layer.” But restraint was never going to last forever.
“Eventually, of course, we wanted to put the hammer down—BAM! After this, the hero drifts completely off the map, left with nothing but two clean guitars, screaming into an empty space. But then all of a sudden—BAM!—another hammer, arriving unexpectedly, used by our hero to flatten everything in his path once and for all: a reluctant but absolute obliteration for anyone who left him no choice.”
For more than a decade, 30,000 Monkies have occupied a unique place within the European underground. Emerging from the Belgian noise-rock scene, the band built their reputation through a string of increasingly adventurous releases that balanced cathartic chaos with an unmistakable sense of fun. From the dizzying riff storms of Somewhere Over The Painbow to the wild experimentation of I Ate Myself To Grow Twice As Big and HONESTY INTEGRITY FRIENDSHIP PASSION, the band have consistently followed their own path. With Super Rebound, they may have finally arrived at the destination they have been chasing all along.
Stockholm post-punk trio Then Comes Silence presents ‘Remaker Redeemer’, the second single from their forthcoming Requiem Ballroom album, due in November via Metropolis Records. The music video, filmed by Damon Zurawski of Future Legends Films, captures the song perfectly, descending into the space between death and rebirth, where the final journey into darkness becomes a passage toward transformation, renewal and the possibility of another world.
Then Comes Silence has also just launched their European tour, which runs throughout September and October, bringing them to venues and like-minded music lovers in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy and Czech Republic, before returning home to Sweden for the final show on this leg.
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A tightly focused trio since 2022, Then Comes Silence was formed in 2012 by vocalist-bassist Alex Svenson in 2012. Drummer Jonas Fransson and guitarist Hugo Zombie, round out the band in its most direct, powerful and uncompromising form. One of the leading names on today’s goth, post-punk and darkwave scene, they are driven by a fascination with horror, the occult and the raw intensity of underground music, having forged a distinctive sound and a devoted international following.
The Requiem Ballroom album itself is divided into two parts: ‘Ballroom’ was mixed by Jon Bordon (Nicole Sabouné, Melody Club, The Exploding Boy) and the ‘Requiem’ half was mixed byTom van Heesch (Rammstein, Apocalyptica, Backyard Babies). Svante Forsbäck / Chartmakers (Rammstein, Amaranthe, Ville Valo, The Rasmus, Apocalyptica) assumed mastering duties. ”Remaker Redeemer introduces the second part of the album ‘Requiem Ballroom’. It’s about new life, and being reborn with the old sins washed away. A kind of cleansing, a fresh start, and the feeling of beginning again. The choice of instruments and sound on this track is a way to explore something different this time,” says Alex Svenson.
“Death is generally regarded, across many cultures, as the final blackout where nothing follows. Yet in another sense, death can also serve as a metaphor for change and transformation. To take the next step, change is inevitable.”
Then Comes Silence earlier released ‘Judgement Day’, a driving anthem that embraces failure, reckless choices and the thrill of living without regrets, embracing a final celebration before the inevitable reckoning. The vivid behind-the-scenes documentary by Marzipan Moonlight offers a glimpse into the video’s creation and the thriving spirit of Stockholm’s goth community.
LIVE DATES SEP. 11 - Glain, Belgium @ Deux Ours SEP. 12 – Rotterdam-Albrandswaard, Netherlands @ Baroeg Open Air 2026 SEP. 13 - Rennes, France @ Brewklyn SEP. 14 - Paris, France @ Le Chinois SEP. 15 - Rezé, France @ Cold Crash SEP. 16 - Lyon, France @ Rock N’Eat SEP. 17 - Marseille, France @ Le Molotov SEP. 18 - Torino, Italy @ Ziggy Club SEP. 19 - Castelfranco Veneto, Italy @ Sale Improve SEP. 20 - Hlavní Město Praha, Czechia @ Subzero OCT. 24 - Stockholm, Sweden @ Kollektivet Livet
The Body and Cel Genesis share ‘Whole Wide World,’ the title track and second preview from their debut collaborative album of the same name, out November 13 via Thrill Jockey. The song wastes no time getting to the point, fusing the punishing force of power electronics with a bitter nihilism that runs throughout the record. Built on lyrics by Chip King and Pauline Poderoso about exhaustion and the limits of continuing to place hope in humanity, the track offers a direct distillation of what emerges when the two projects’ sounds and sensibilities collide.
That confrontation extends to the song’s construction. As Chris Danko of Cel Genesis explains, when bandmate Poderoso delivers the line “You want a key change?,” the song gives way not to a key change but to a crushing breakdown, a moment that plays with spectacle while deliberately addressing and challenging the listener.
About the track, Chris comments, “What was once before you – an exciting, mysterious future – is now behind you. Lived; understood; disappointing. You realise you are not special. You have struggled into existence, and are now slipping silently out of it. This is everyone’s experience.”
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The collaboration was first conceived on tour, with few parameters set in advance, letting Cel Genesis’ maximalist compositions and aggressive editing meet Body’s improvisational approach on even ground, with both projects pushing their ideas to their outermost limits. The resulting record draws heavily from trance, distortion, and experimental electronics, anchored by the visceral interplay of dual drumming from Lee Buford and Nick Cowman and the combined force of both groups’ vocals.
Recorded at Machines with Magnets by Seth Manchester, with additional recording by Andrew Oswald in California, Whole Wide World evolved over two years of recording and meticulous editing. Some songs began with electronic beds generated by Cel Genesis, while others grew from live drums, with each group reshaping and reimagining the material.
Whole Wide World is a dense and heavy album, but one that nevertheless feels joyful and fresh—an uncategorizable ode to egoless invention. It’s a work born of artists with disparate approaches, who feel compelled and comfortable to surrender them in service of the birth of new art. Whilst the album was made with joy, its themes confront today’s harsher realities; we see this play out through the eyes of an unrelenting optimist processing the death of possibility itself.
Lustmord Lombardo, the pairing of two of heavy and experimental music’s most respected musicians, ambient heavyweight Lustmord and percussive force Dave Lombardo, release ‘The Desolate Shore Part I: Submergence’ from the duo’s forthcoming album, The Pulse of Atoms (Oct. 2, Ipecac Recordings).
“’The Desolate Shore’ is a meditative landscape that feels like a slow descent into the abyss,” Lombardo says of the newly released track. “There is a sense of the ground moving beneath you as shifting rhythms make it feel like nothing is ever completely still beneath the surface.”
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Lustmord, discussing the duo’s approach to the album, shared: “One thing about an album like this is that you can’t really point it out as being part of any specific genre or hopefully any specific period. Is it from last year? Is it from 10 years ago, is it from 20 years ago, is it from 5 years in the future? It’s trying to create something that has its own sound, not tapping into whatever musical language or history you’re familiar with. It goes way, way further back. This is the sound of planets dying or of stars being born. It’s about a bigger picture. It’s the sound of the birth of the universe and the death of the universe; it’s not rock and roll.”
The two musicians met backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne, around the time that Lustmord and Melvins released their collaborative album. Nearly two decades later, Lombardo and Lustmord convened as Lustmord Lombardo, crafting an album that is as cold and distant as it is frantic and engaging. The Pulse of Atoms showcases an unheard side of Lombardo and brings Lustmord back to his industrial roots.
Rather than composing songs in a traditional sense, Lustmord built evolving walls and vortices of sound, leaving room for Lombardo to add percussion and various synthesizer layers. Once the editing and arrangement was complete, Lustmord mixed and mastered the record, which was a balancing act between the two players’ large, loud musical presences.
With their album debut Nüwa Mends the Sky, UREDDA reveal themselves as musical alchemists who create pieces of utter beauty and a fascinating otherness, that appear to the listener as magic due to being at least one step ahead of their time. Their perfect amalgamation of elements from contemporary electronics, new wave, post-punk, krautrock, and drone among many other influences creates something excitingly new from some things old and beloved. Their sounds are born from experience as well as a deep understanding and mastery of their art.
The masterminds behind UREDDA have already left deep marks in circles of avant-garde music. Thighpaulsandra, previously a member of Coil and Spiritualized, has worked with Julian Cope among other influential acts – these include URUK, in which he was joined by Massimo Pupillo. Pupillo and Paolo Mongardi are probably best known as members of label mates Zu.
UREDDA sprang into being out of pure synchronicity – while those who believe in predetermination are welcome to view the meeting as glorious providence. Thighpaulsandra had travelled to Italy for a solo performance at a contemporary art museum while, at the same time, Massimo and Paolo were working at the studio of UREDDA guitarist Bruno to try out some new raw sketches. On a fateful whim, they invited Thighpaulsandra to join them. There was no prior blueprint, no rehearsal, and no intention of starting a band. Yet the sparks of creativity and inspiration were flying while music began to flow spontaneously.
The band name stems from the famous Italian ‘Caso Amicizia’ (‘Friendship Case’). This refers to alleged mass contacts between humans and extraterrestrial beings called W56 in the central Italian region of the Abruzzi between 1956 and the late 1970s. These aliens supposedly taught harmony and friendship. In this context, ‘Uredda’ was defined as the vital energy of love, friendship and wonder. This energy was not an abstract concept, but the literal fuel driving their advanced technology and the very core of their mission on Earth. “All I know is that a world on the precipice has a desperate need for beauty”, Massimo Pupillo states, discussing today’s single release. “Not a shallow and only cosmetic glamour, but real beauty – one that incorporates and transforms our deepest anxieties and fears. The diamond is born in the lotus, but the lotus is born from the mud.”
This philosophical approach ties UREDDA directly to an esoteric legend of early Krautrock, by mirroring the belief that musicians could collectively tap into a cosmic current and were able to communicate directly with their mixing desks, instruments and gear as living entities.
Ahead of the album, they’ve unveiled a video for ‘All He Knows’, which you can see here:
Aural Aggravation 