05) Wode, Uncrossing Keys (20 Buck Spin)
Release:10/3/2025
Wode makes blackened death metal that feels like it was excavated rather than recorded, and Uncrossing Keys plays like the soundtrack to discovering a medieval grimoire that definitely shouldn’t be opened but absolutely will be. The record’s tension comes from its structural intelligence: riffs arranged like cursed architecture, melodies that seem aware of their own inevitability, and a sense of theatrical doom that never feels campy even though it probably should. This is seriousness taken to the point of fantasy, and it works.
Key Track: “Transmutation”
04) Nite, Cult of the Serpent Sun (Season of Mist)
Release: 3/14/2025
Nite continues to insist on singing black metal with clean voices, which is basically like insisting that Dracula attend the opera in business casual. Still, Cult of the Serpent Sun transforms that incongruity into identity. It’s a glam-tinged, leather-clad reinterpretation of darkness, more interested in neon-lit mystique than corpse-paint misery. The album feels like a hypothetical world where Rob Halford joined Dissection, and everyone agreed not to comment on it. The result is oddly elegant in a way metal rarely allows itself to be.
Key Track: “Tarmut”
03) Eudaemon, Spiritual Anguish (Riff Merchant / Fiadh Productions)
Release: 5/23/2025
Spiritual Anguish is the kind of record that suggests emotional turmoil can be sculpted into something strangely methodical—like black metal processed through the logic of a self-help book written by a philosopher who’s actively having a breakdown. Eudaemon leans into introspection with the intensity of a diary that might burst into flames if you read it too quickly. The music is raw but weirdly purposeful, as if pain becomes meaningful the moment you commit it to a precisely timed blast beat.
Key Track: “Silt”
02) Abigail Williams, A Void Within Existence (Agonia Records)
Release: 7/18/2025
Abigail Williams has always sounded like a band trying to decide whether they’re tragic visionaries or simply doomed to perpetual reinvention, and A Void Within Existence finally leans fully into the former. The record balances orchestral melancholy with sharp, rattling aggression, creating a texture that feels both meticulously composed and emotionally frayed. It’s an album about absence that somehow feels overwhelmingly present, like a ghost that insists on making eye contact.
Key Track: “Still Nights”
