Initial Descent: November 3 – 9, 2025

Agnostic Front

The calendar turned again and I all but blew my load last week on Halloween so I’m still playing catch up. Good times. Speaking of times, we fell back an hour and I HATE it. I feel like what little bit of time I had is gone…vaporized. Just like that. I’ll get over it eventually. Anyway, new stuff this week kicks off with punk vets Agnostic Front who still manage to not only make me smile but get me beyond stoked for new things. Call it reminiscing or whatever you want but these dudes can still kick all the asses!! Following that we’ve got mathgrind extraordinaires Pupil Slicer back with the FIYAH, Beastwars just keep on being consistently great at their deep riff driven brand of metal, and Norilsk do doom like very few others can. As if those four weren’t enough, we’ve got a ton more in the list that follows so check them out and throw some love at something.

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Album Review: Amorphis – Borderland

When a band has been around for more than 25 years, the overall consistent quality comes into question for some. Whether this is due to lineup changes, genre shifting, new influences, or a combination thereof, bands tend to insert, use, then brush these moments off as foundations for new ideas. Following the end of the trilogy that was 2015’s Under the Red Cloud to 2022’s Halo, Amorphis had hinted that they were keen on seeing what else was out there. With the release of their fifteenth(!) album, Borderland, Amorphis has struck melodic gold. Let’s discuss.

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Album Review: Primal Fear — Domination

If there’s a band that best fits the label “meat-and-potatoes power metal,” it’s probably Primal Fear. And you’d better emphasize the meat in that description, too. Pick any album from the band’s lengthy discography and you’ll find yourself immersed in hefty riffage, thunderous calls-to-arms, and the prevailing sense that the band might well have perfected the formula for workout music. And now, after nearly three decades of doing their thing with remarkable consistency, Ralf Scheepers and Co. are back with another fist- (or iron- ?) pumping set, in Domination. Got your spotter ready?

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Initial Descent: August 25 – 31, 2025

Helloween
Helloween

Hard to believe we’re on the doorstep of spooky season and pumpkin spice everything yet, here we are. So, start making your scary movie watchlists and warming up the ol’ Type O Negative playlists. And now for your weekly blast of new releases of which we kick off with the ever amazing, trusty, and seasoned heavy metal vets Helloween, then we move into some thrash from Void and a blackened variety of the same from Deathhammer, and last up top is some vile industrial from Hateful Abandon…SCORE! As always though, there are plenty more picks below that span the many metal genres we have these days. Meaning: you absolutely will find something to take home. Now, go find all your fall decorations and skulls and whatnot and get to it. See you here throughout the week. Also and again we say, RIP Brent Hinds.

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Feature: Iron Savior’s Reforged — Machine World and the Nine Five Circles ov other album re-recordings that, uh… exist?

Yesterday marked the release of a sorta-new album from Iron Savior, titled Reforged — Machine World. I say “sorta-new” because, well… while it exists today and did not exist two days ago, it’s comprised entirely of material that has existed for years. For the third time in the last decade-or-so, the German power metal mainstays have re-recorded — sorry, reforged — large chunks of their early catalogue and repackaged them for a new quarter-century. And once you set aside the existential question of necessity, it’s… fine?

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CANTO: Despised Icon, Wind Walkers, Amorphis, and More

Holy smokes am I glad this week is over. Mountains tomorrow! But like… different mountains. Kinda. But not really.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
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