THE DEVIL'S MONTH: August 2025
Rounding up some of the finest releases of the previous month - including Andy's picks too!
The heat is finally subsiding a little, days are getting shorter, the world keeps getting worse, so it’s probably time to drown ourselves in music while hibernating and pretending nothing is going on outside of these riffs and beats, right? Whether you take your music as escapism or catharsis (and hey, Catharsis themselves are back too!), or both, we got you. And by we, we mean José and Andy and their usual monthly picks for your delight, but also our friends at Mondo Negro who will probably carry most of what your turntable hungers for in these times of artistic need.
So without further ado, let’s plunge into what the last remnants of summer threw up for us, through the expert lenses of our scribes.
Amphisbaena
Rift
(I, Voidhanger Records)
If you’re not familiar with Amphisbaena, I’m sure you’ve already either dismissed them or eagerly jumped to the play button, depending on your relationship with war metal, or at least the more brutal black/death kind of genre-merging. It’s understandable, seeing as if there’s members, ex-members and former live collaborators of bands like Weapon, Antediluvian, Conqueror, Demoncy or Rites Of Thy Degringolade here, so it’s not like you’d expect a quiet acoustic folk album out of these beastly people. Also, it’s not like there was a lot to know of them - only a self-titled EP from 2015 that I happened to come across randomly at the time, during a nice chat with guitarist/bassist/vocalist N.K.L.H. at the merch table of a Rites Of Thy Degringolade show (which was sensational, by the way) where he pointed to the CD of that band he also played in (cheers Dylan!). Already in those four songs it was clear that there was something more at work with Amphisbaena than it met the eye, or their members’ discographies. A masterful employment of loud/quiet dynamics, of creepy atmospheres and even, gasp!, a very proggy approach to some of the more elaborate passages. It might have taken a whole decade since then, but ‘Rift’ is pretty much the crystallisation of all those good signs of the EP. Yeah, it has that fist-through-the-skull aggression of the black/death metal these people usually play in all their other “jobs” - and even those are slowed down to a crawling, almost doom pace sometimes -, but it feels that it’s there mainly for contrast, to work as a foundation for the star-gazing prog guitars and synths, and the murky ambient sections. So yeah, we didn’t know we needed someone to pull a Blood Incantation for war metal, and yet here we are - and I, for one, am not complaining at all.
Ash Magick
Rituals Of Anathematic East
(Apocalyptic Witchcraft)
The much-deserved success and attention that Witch Club Satan (mostly, though there are others) are currently enjoying - naturally, simultaneously with a barrage of knucklehead hate comments - is great in several ways, not the least of which because it might help shed a light on other female-led black metal bands. Not to say that Ash Magick are following them or anyone else (in fact, they are more or less contemporaries, this is Ash Magick’s third album already), or even comparing the bands simply because they both feature an exclusively female line-up, as they are in fact quite different. This Turkish duo is much rawer in sound, and more esoteric and ritualistic in their conceptual approach (“born from firsthand occult experience, the band channels themes of spiritual decay, cursed devotion, and forbidden knowledge,” the press release offfers) in opposition to the more “activist”, so to speak, direct kick-in-the-face posture of WCS. The one thing that they do have in common with the aforementioned, however, is a very palpable female energy, an unbridled rage that feels true rather than constructed. The fuzziness of the lo-fi sound and the very enveloping nature of the riffs lends monstrous songs like ‘Silent Ruin, None Evade’ all the miasmic atmosphere they require, but underneath the noxious fumes, it’s the sheer intensity and forcefulness of the performance that really grabs you. Like a very concrete fist coming out of the very ethereal mist.
Catharsis
Hope Against Hope
(No Gods No Masters)
Yeah, those Catharsis! You should have seen my face when a friend told me that Catharsis had released an album yesterday and that it was on Bandcamp. I thought it was all an elaborate hoax until I pressed play, and yeah, then it took a whole two seconds for my brain to finally compute that the real, proper Catharsis are back. I mean, it’s been a while, right? ‘Samsara’ and ‘Passion’ were released in 1997 and 1999 respectively, when a whole bunch of the people who will go apeshit about ‘Hope Against Hope’ weren’t even born yet! As an angry twenty year old with shit to get off my chest who punched walls to the sound of bands like Coalesce, Deadguy, Orchid, Kiss It Goodbye, Turmoil (who are also baaaaack!) or those early Converge records, needless to say Catharsis struck a chord, and those two classics remain in my rotation to this day. The fact that I was slapped with the news they were back and ten seconds later was already listening to the album (ah, technology!) means I didn’t get to think too much about what Catharsis 2025 could be or create any expectations other than that sudden rush of excitement, but it’s safe to say that they handled any kind of weight that a two and a half decade-long absence of an iconic band could have created with their typical effortless class. They did it by just being themselves, just like they’ve always been - I urge you to read the little manifesto they have posted on their Bandcamp, where it says that “we still believe in hardcore as a force for change, a component of an ecosystem of movements for liberation,” and also, crucially, that “we have not outgrown the idealism of our youth.” That much is absolutely clear in the angst and vitriol coming from these songs, as well as the depth and punch of the lyrics. Musically speaking, amazingly, it’s like they haven’t missed a beat at all. Of course, all of these guys have been active in other bands, but to have recovered that uniquely urgent, darkly melodic, primordially incandescent feel of their first records wasn’t, I’m sure, at all a given. Yet they did, even adding further elements to the sound, details like occasional female vocals (operatic-like, too!), what sounds like a violin and a few atmospheric, quieter passages that work really well. A new perfect example of how to do a proper return to activity as a band.
Scott Lavene
Cars, Buses, Bedsits & Shops
(Nothing Fancy Records)
For all the shows and films that we get these days exalting the importance of stories and storytellers, it seems that we aren’t going through a particularly fertile period of producing them. Worse still, when it comes to music, it’s been really hard to find storytellers who can also write a fucking great song (or songwriters who can tell a fucking great story, it works both ways) and merge those two arts with the weight and sheer gravitas that old masters like Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen or Johnny Cash did. There are a few, of course, and I try to do my tiny little bit here in my microscopic corner by never hesitating to champion them, from Steve Von Till to Natalie Mering, from William Elliott Whitmore to Guy Garvey, Tim Barry, Orville Peck or Christian Kjellvander, among others. Now, I know I’m a little late to this particular party, but I’d like to add Scott Lavene to that bunch - not that he sounds at all like any of them (he really doesn’t), but the ability to create entire worlds in your mind with the power of storytelling is all there and immediately apparent in every song. That his approach is quite unique just adds to the charm. See, Scott is an Essex man, “raised on power ballads, punk and swearing,” as his bio hilariously states, and listening to one of his songs feels like you just came across a strange savant at the pub who’s telling you a few tall tales over a pint or twelve. Imagine, if you will, a less rocking-out and more emotional Springsteen raised in Dagenham instead of New Jersey, cheering for Dag & Red instead of the Yankees, and you might be somewhere in Scott’s ballpark. The songs on ‘Cars, Buses, Bedsits and Shops’ are as funny as they are sad, as inspiring as they are tragic, the voice of the lifetime loser “living on cigarette butts, coffee and ketchup” ('from ‘Pound Shop Pacino’) you nevertheless keep rooting for. Scott masterfully alternates between an engaging spoken word and sorta rough yet poignantly emotional singing, and nowhere is this better exemplified than on ‘A Bus In July’, a heartbreakingly beautiful tune that will immediately conquer you if you still have any emotions still functioning inside. I mean, this is a record that starts with the lines “I got a ‘62 Chevy Impala / Well, it’s just a number plate nailed to the wall / I bought it from a guy at a boot fair / It’s the only part of the car I could afford”, on ‘Muscle Car’, and let’s face it, from then on, you’re hooked. On the songs, on the stories and on the guy telling them.
Xeeland
Master Builder
(God Unknown Records)
Jason Stoll is a hell of a dude - which is why we invited him for an episode of the podcast some time ago, of course. As if playing in JAAW, KLÄMP or Sex Swing, among others, and running God Unknown Records too, wasn’t enough, the man’s now giving us hypnotic, mind-bending drones in the form of Xeeland, and yeah, of course it’s yet another awesome endeavour. ‘Master Builder’ is already his fourth release under this name in just over a year, but it’s the most fascinating yet - while “hypnotic” is still very much the operative word, as it’s very easy to just let yourself go in the relentless, pulsating rhythm of these pieces, they go much deeper than before. The first seconds of the first play of this will seem like mere bleepy bloops plonking away, but they soon reveal themselves as much more, lulling you in while subtly (but very effectively) channeling the essential vibes of krautrock and ambient electronics, swaying from playful to forceful moods and hammering away until the patterns and textures seep into your mind for a profound psychedelic effect. Let yourself go!
Big Tickle - Dulse & Gabbana EP (Black Tragick Records)
Unabashed free rock from Big Tickle, a group featuring legendary singer/songwriter from the Northern of Ireland, Robyn G Shiels. Gnarled, buckled guitars, Can, Faust, Royal Trux and a heap of good time hollering. ‘Do It If You Wanna’ is an insanely catchy banger, part mantra, part loose groove and it fabulously manages to sound, simultaneously, like a Sesame Street kids song and a Manson Family jam. ‘Regal Filter’ starts out like a cut from ‘Hex Enduction Hour’-era The Fall then takes a stroll through Captain Beefheart’s ‘Safe As Milk’ album and is delivered with an enormous dash of unbridled brio. Image if, during the recording of Miles Davis’ ‘On The Corner’ album, someone had suggested getting a bunch of carefree Ulster musicians in to play with the band, and you wouldn’t be far off the mark. ‘Eight Times Typical’ is a white hot garage rock colossus which begins as a Nuggets flavoured romp before reintroducing the Manson Family Jam Band during proceedings which then leads to, I kid you not, a Sly And The Family Stone deconstructed section. This EP is joyous and life-affirming, party music for the kind of party you’d actually like to attend.
Maruja - Trenches (Music For Nations)
This track from their forthcoming album sees the Manchester collective combine the approach of noise rock, the groove of A Tribe Called Quest (circa ‘Low End Theory’) the freedom wail of jazz’s Fire Music and the righteous rage of Fugazi. Listening, it sounds like you’re in the room with them and it’s simultaneously hypnotic and agitated with sax overlapping with discordant stabs. It has a lot in common with Bristol’s Knives but is delivered with less kinetic restlessness and more dread-fuelled menace.
The None - On Automatic (Zennor Records)
From the forthcoming album, ‘Matter And Care’ out October 10th this gnashing stomper has a tender heart and underneath the Shellac-ing minimal rock riffs and feedback the vocals of Kai Whyte throw themselves around the stereo field while great, jagged guitars fight it out underneath. The arrival of a Slint/Codeine guitar figure heralds a gorgeous vocal melody before the track collapses in on itself then reassembles into a mutant funk robot.
Plastics - Flesh Circuit (Crew Cuts)
Brighton’s Plastics are recognisably a hardcore unit but employ so many unique touches that take them into a field of their own. ‘Flesh Circuit’ is a terrific sounding record with wide-eyed clarity every track sits flush with the one before and after creating a cohesive, unbeatable whole. Tight, bright guitars that, to my ears, may have some kind of modulation on them (Chorus? Flanger?) play insistently memorable riffs over a truculent bass & drum section that anchors everything with bruising authority. Oli’s vocals are superb throughout giving sharp relief to the frantic wall of sound and making good use of echo to add depth and wild excitement to the songs. It’s difficult to highlight stand out tracks because they’re all so fantastic but if pushed I’ll go with the one-two punch of ‘Swing It’ followed by ‘Growing Cold’. Buy this, it’s a modern masterpiece.
Traidora - Disforia Eterna (La Vida Es Un Mus)
From Venezuela-born Eva Leblanc, this anthemic slab of sludgy, blackened crust oozes like a Lysergamide class tar from the speakers and seeps into the nervous system. The chorus has an answer/call dynamic of furious hardcore pitted against a cacophony of pitched down voices from a bad acid trip. Around the minute mark it tests the fortitude of your psyche by slowing into a hellish Sabbathian crawl, genuine nightmare fuel, before tremelo-picking its way out of the madness. Sung entirely in Spanish and recorded at that palace of glorious noise, Bear Bites Horse Studios in London, this is a thrillingly bleak journey beyond the threshold. The album ‘Una Mujer Trans Sin País’ is released late September.
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Amphisbaena is great, and are on the bill for this year's Covenant festival in Vancouver, BC.
https://covenantfestival.ca/
The Western Canadian death metal scene is filthy and doing well. The new Hedonist album, out of Victoria, is vicious.