Albums of October 3, 2025

The most interesting releases of the week!

Well, it’s still Hooded Menace. The band’s seventh full-length, released on Season of Mist, features some stylistic changes such as a reverb-drenched minute-long intro and a slightly more apparent 80s influence than has previously been present. This new album drapery goes all the way to a surprising Duran Duran cover. And while Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration isn’t as pummeling as Never Cross The Dead, and while some of the more interesting melodies from Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed have gone into hiding, Hooded Menace still play some of the best death/doom being made today.

Chuck Schuldiner was the last musician who was as consistently capable of writing interesting guitar parts and incorporating them into an engaging larger whole as Lasse Pyykkö. And while I miss the edge that some older Hooded Menace albums have, the band’s new direction allows them to show their unique talents in a different setting. I’ll get lost in these guitars forever.

Worlds Within was one of my favorite albums of 2020 after releasing in January of that year. A bit has changed since then. While Worlds Within featured lush, full sounds that slowly shifted over music that spanned multiple tracks, Lifeblood contains much more closed, melodic music. Plus it’s about twenty minutes longer. Plus Raphael Weinroth-Browne has his shirt off in his promo pics now. For the unfamiliar, this is a solo cello project with a tangential relationship to metal through Raphael Weinroth-Browne‘s connections to a variety of prog bands including Leprous. The pieces include enough different parts to sound like a chamber ensemble, but apparently, it’s all cello.

For negatives, Lifeblood does drag a bit in the middle, and the writing isn’t as engrossing as Worlds Within was. That’s all I got. The performances remain stunning, with every possible sound this side of the wolf wrung out of the old instrument. At times Lifeblood sounds like trance music, at times like an orchestral chamber piece written in the romantic era. And the melodies hit. Raphael Weinroth-Browne clearly knows how to write something catchy, and I appreciate the distinctions between Lifeblood and Worlds Within.

Ruina Draconis, released on I, Voidhanger, is Smohalla‘s second full-length release and their first in fourteen years. The band plays progressive black metal with a heavy dose of electronics. The band’s songwriting draws from the styles of Arcturus and some of Ihsahn‘s weirder solo stuff.

Ruina Draconis leans towards excess and grandiosity. Every track is long, and vocals chant and shout with emotion over electronics that sound like a church organ featured in a gothic opera has been transported to a cyberpunk future. Smohalla can groove as well, taking these eerie oddities and performing them with head-nodding confidence.

Nocturnal Birding was released on Relapse Records. I’ve never gotten Author & Punisher. Their blend of industrial and metal has always seemed like it didn’t combine their influences in an interesting way. Or maybe I just didn’t get what they were going for. Either way, Nocturnal Birding is a dark and vicious industrial album featuring thick guitars, punching drums, and birdsong.

While not the focal point, I love the drums on this album. Different passages use a variety of percussion instruments to set the mood, from the base drum cannons of opener “Meadowlark” to the more traditional kit to the interludes of bells and potentially hand drums on “Titanis.” From the ground up, Author & Punisher have created an album that rips the listener from a cold industrial world to a warm, human one on a whim. Nocturnal Birding sounds so thoroughly in its own world that it’s difficult not to appreciate it.

…Towards Doom, ellipses and all, was released on Sentient Ruin Records. The album’s name is a bit misleading given the black/death ferocity of it all. …Towards Doom harkens back to earlier, more raw days of war metal. The punk roots of the genre are so prominent that they sound like they’re driving the ship. The performances are effectively and intentionally frayed, and the songwriting repetitive enough to fit the mood. Deathwinds gives a real dark basement aura.

Deathwinds makes full use of their excellent guitar tones, letting the buzz drill into the listener’s ears over repeated rapidfire riffs. And while the band nails the underground, raw aesthetic, they do this with engaging and memorable songs featuring enough touchpoints to help the listener avoid getting lost in the mush. I especially appreciate the random guitar solo wails on “Evisceration Torment” that come out of nowhere and then sound like they fade into a different track on a different album.