Music News 20250819 (Aug 19, 2025)
Items of interest and spreading the word.
featuring VÖLUR , Daytripper , Cleaning Women , AUßERWELT , FOREIGN FILM , Bask , MOTHERLESS , MEZZROW , RITUAL MASS , Agriculture , DEFIGUREMENT and Monuments in Ruin EP277
Toronto-based trio VÖLUR, the band that has spent the past decade proving heavy music doesn’t need guitars, join forces with producer and sound artist CARES (James Beardmore) to release their fourth full-length album Breathless Spirit today via Black Throne Productions. The record arrives alongside the premiere of a haunting video for “Windbourne Sorcery II,” an otherworldly piece of doom-folk storytelling featuring guest vocals from Amy Bowles (PONY DA LOOK).
Daytripper conjures earth-crushing desert stoner doom from the sands of Phoenix, Arizona. Last year, the release of their debut LP, “Book I: The Trip”, beckoned to doom worshipers worldwide with infectious riffs and mystifying lore. Their upcoming project, “The Alchemist”, evolves and progresses the doom palette while further illuminating the backstory of a core character from Book I. The new EP steeps Daytripper’s doom core in a concoction of psychedelic locrian modes, enchanting synthesizers, and nod-inducing sludge.
Washer is Cleaning Women's fifth album. It started from scratch with the construction of the new Vacuum Sound Space studio back in 2020. Things took time, material was created and discarded, arrangements were edited and the form of the content needed work. All instruments are still homemade, but as the band searched for a new sound, even the responsibilities within the band were rearranged. Percussionist CW03 sometimes clung to the stringed instruments and laundryman CW04 also scooped the rhythm section with his robotic hands, still hitting the melodic pins of a clothes horse with one limb. CW01 wove a web together with his electric Viola de Gamba/Cello hybrid and his coffee-bean-can-bouzouki.
Washer is out on October 3rd via Svart Records
Photo Credit: Jussi Karjalainen
In a time when post-metal often finds itself recycling familiar tropes, AUßERWELT’s upcoming debut full-length album "Breath", set for release on October 2 via Moment of Collapse Records, is a rare gust of originality - both expansive and intimate, cerebral yet visceral. The Münster, Germany-based quartet has distilled over a decade of sonic exploration and transformation into a 63-minute odyssey that is equal parts brutal and beautiful, abstract and deeply human.
From life-long members of the heart of the fertile Sacramento underground music scene arrives FOREIGN FILM, formed by members of legendary metallic hardcore outfit Will Haven.
For as long as they've been together, Bask have called Asheville, North Carolina home. But ever since they came rumbling down from the Land of the Sky, it was clear that these Southern trailblazers were cut from a different neck of the woods. On their upcoming fourth album, the band take Heavy Americana to a whole new dimension. The latest single from The Turning revolves around "The Traveler", a mysteriously ageless gunslinger who refuses to go down amidst a mind-melting blaze of glory.
Watch the surreal video for "The Traveler" on the Season of Mist YouTube channel.
The Turning releases, August 22, 2025 on Season of Mist.
Photo by Garrett Williams
Chicago’s MOTHERLESS will release their Do You Feel Safe? full-length on September 12th on Prosthetic Records. Featuring eight punishing tracks – including the searing singles “Weaponized Goodwill,” “Reptile Dysfunction,” and “Insect Politics” – this record doesn’t ask questions. It kicks the door in.
Photo by Jenny May
Following previously-released, stand-alone singles, "As Fear Unfolds" and a killer cover version of Ghost's "Ritual", Swedish thrash metal force MEZZROW have finally revealed the first details of their forthcoming, new studio album! Entitled "Embrace The Awakening", the band's third full-length rager will be released on November 14, 2025 via ROAR. Available on 2-CD Digipak incl. the "Keep It True - Live" bonus album, 1-LP Vinyl in Bloodred Sky Marbled edition as well as in Digital formats, the album pre-sale has just started
photo: Jens Rydén
Pittsburgh-based RITUAL MASS today unveils the title track to their debut LP, Cascading Misery, nearing release on 20 Buck Spin.
The debut full-length album from RITUAL MASS is more than a collection of songs, it’s a series of calculated assaults on the virtue of the holy. Evolving beyond earlier EP and demo releases, Cascading Misery encapsulates the bludgeoning infliction of pain and the slow peel of skin by flame, rife with both sonic chaos and extinguished hope.
photos by J. Adams
Agriculture – "The Weight”
From the forthcoming album The Spiritual Sound, out October 3 on The Flenser.
Leah Levinson leads the band’s latest single, part of a series of songs that bear witness to queer life. Written during a month when friends were being harassed in public for being trans, queer, or a women. The Weight reflects both the dangers and the community of that time. Levinson sought to paint a holistic portrait of queer life without relying on political slogans or indulgent images of suffering.
Experimental death/grind abomination DEFIGUREMENT – formed by current/former members of Fear Factory, Malignancy, Raven, Bad Acid Trip, Murder Construct, Lack Of Interest, Rottenness, and countless more – will release their facemelting debut album, Endbryo, through Nefarious Industries in October.
DEFIGUREMENT encompasses a cast of life-long henchmen from across the metal/extreme music underground; an experimental grindcore project featuring drummer Mike Heller (Malignancy, Raven, ex-Fear Factory), guitarist Kevin Fetus (Lack Of Interest, Fetus Eaters, ex-Murder Construct), bassist/noise architect DMT (Mormon Mincers, ex-Bad Acid Trip), and vocalist Matthias Joyce aka "Matti Güey" (Rottenness, To Violently Vomit, Formless Master).
and of course, Monuments in Ruin - Chapter 277 (music podcast)
Welcome to Monuments in Ruin EP277
Opening arms to the universal airwaves
Track List:
00:00 Monuments in Ruin Intro
00:10 Carved in Stone by Erebe - Duolithe (Silent Future Recordings)
11:39 first break
12:27 Lawgiver by Cronos Compulsion - Lawgiver (Avantgarde Music, Unorthodox Emanations)
15:03 Smashing Heads by NERVOSA - Smashing Heads (single) (Napalm Records)
17:49 Zisurru by Décryptal - Simulacre (Me Saco Un Ojo, Rotted Life)
22:39 Ammonian Baths by Cancer Void - First Metastasis (Me Saco Un Ojo, Iron Fortress)
25:38 Sequentia by All Men Unto Me - Requiem (The Larvarium)
31:07 second break
32:11 Alone by CROP - S.S.R.I (Third House Communications)
38:58 Black Earth by HEXELLA - The Ancient Gaping Mouth (Hells Headbangers)
41:05 Bort by Frusen Sorg - Jag Springer Med Avbrutna EP (Fiadh Productions, Void Sound)
43:06 Kill him by A Stick And A Stone - Conspire (Fiadh Productions, Mutual Aid Records, Independent)
47:12 third break
48:39 Spiral Degradation by NEFAS - Oblation ov Obliteration (Independent)
53:49 take us home
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