Mephistofeles is the ultra-evil and ultra-fuzzy stoner/psych/doom trio out of Parana, Argentina and if you don’t know their work you should fix that immediately. All hail Heavy Psych Sounds for re-releasing and giving the full reissue treatment to the band’s amazing and very out of print first three records: Whore (9), I’m Heroin (8), and Satan Sex Ceremonies (8), all of which are must haves for fans of all things that are awesome. You cannot go wrong with any of the Mephistofeles records.
Whore is filled with evil, fuzzy riffs, nasty subject matter, and a scattering of B-movie clips, when put together creates some phenomenal stuff. If you like Electric Wizard, Uncle Acid, and some of the newer bands out of South America like Fulanno and Demonio this will be right up your alley. Tracks like Kill Yourself, the opener Black Sunday, and the nasty as hell Drug Addict are all so great, with the closer, Wizard Of Meth taking the prize as my favourite on a record with seven killer tracks that hate you and wish you were dead.
Album two, I’m Heroin, is just as evil and nasty, with lo-fi fuzz leading the way on filthy dirty tracks like Transylvania Funeral, The Rogue, and my favourite, Addicted To Satan, which is scarier than any B horror movie you have ever seen. Pure Sabbath worship.
Their third album, Satan Sex Ceremonies, is a little less fuzzy and a lot doomier, slowing the pace down some for what is the longest of the three albums. It does contain one of the band’s best songs in Profanation. The one-two punch of the acoustic interlude Overdose into the darkness of Syringe is quite the heavy experience in multiple ways. Lo-fi doom psych at its best.
The mystery behind Mephistofeles starts to have the curtain pulled back just a bit with these reissues from a band that should be one of everyone’s favourites of folks who dig the nasty ass fuzz. Whore leads the way, but all three Mephistofeles reissues are must have killer stuff.
The Other – Alienated (Massacre Records) [Rick Eaglestone]
Cologne's horror punk legends return with their darkest offering yet – Alienated.
Right from the opening blast of Hellfire, it is abundantly clear that this is a band revitalized and ready to remind everyone why they are Europe's premier horror punk act. That addictive chorus hits immediately, and frontman Rod Usher's vocals have taken on an even deeper, more menacing quality. The man's always had a distinctive voice, but here he is leaning into the lower register with an authority that makes every word sound like it's been dragged up from some gothic crypt.
The return of founding bassist Andy Only clearly hasn't gone unnoticed in the band's sound. There is a bite to the low end here that gives these songs real heft, and when combined with the dual guitar assault of J. Ends and Van Tom, The Other have crafted a sound that is simultaneously nostalgic and fresh. They've stripped away some of the excess that crept into their more recent work and focused on what made them compelling in the first place.
I Give You The Creeps was the right choice for a lead single. It's got everything you want from The Other in one neat package—rapid-fire verses, a massive sing-along chorus complete with those essential "ohohoh" moments, and enough hooks to fill a meat locker - A Ghost From The 80s leans heavily into new wave territory with its keyboard parts, telling the brilliantly specific story of a ghost trapped on a VHS tape. It's camp, clever, and it has got that eighties vibe.
German-language track Hier Sein continues the band's tradition of including at least one song in their native tongue, and it's a melancholic stomper with tastefully harmonized guitars. Even if you don't speak German, the emotion comes through loud and clear.
In The End slows things down and lets Usher highlight the darker, more resonant parts of his vocal range. Following it with the raging opening of Horror Movie Monster is smart sequencing—Testament to the band's understanding of dynamics and pacing.
Whether it's the pulsating rhythm of The Witch From Outer Space or the up-tempo drive of Don't Be Afraid Of The Night, Boone provides the backbone that allows the rest of the band to shine - Die Human Die tackles the horror of reality rather than fictional monsters, and it's all the more unsettling for it.
The album closes strongly, and there is genuinely not a weak track in the bunch. From the infectious melodies that burrow into your brain and refuse to leave, to the perfectly judged mix of horror aesthetics and genuine darkness, Alienated is The Other at their most focused and vital. They have crafted an album that works equally well as a Halloween soundtrack and as year-round listening, which is precisely what separates the good horror punk bands from the great ones.
Alienated is heavy, catchy, and dark in all the right places. 7/10
Litania - Litania (Heavy Psych Sounds) [Matt Bladen]
Italian-Serbian psych stoner meets The Concert For Bangladesh on the self titled debut from Litania. Now you could call out "cultural appropriation" so many bands borrow influences from other cultures (look how many use Middle Eastern influences), also I'm not sure of the cultural background of any of the members so that approach doesn't fly and thirdly The Beatles did it so shut up.
Consisting of members from Elli De Mon, The Great Northern X, Collars and The Black Heart Procession, Litania are a band who love the drone, hypnotic repetition that is a core part of doom and Indian classical music. The psychadelic wanderings of the band are sustained by the layered distorted guitars of Marco Degli Esposti and the throbbing, insistent bass of Enrico Baraldi.
These two are the rhythm of this record, the power behind the mystical meandering, cranking out riff after riff of impressive and transcendental drone//doom, anchored back to the ground by Vladimir Marikoski's drums and percussion. On top of the noise are the vocal chants of Elisa De Munari, inspired by the words of Indian Ragas, she conducts these rituals with her hypnotic spell casting as well as adding sitar, dilruba, harmonium, and tanpura to further create the required atmosphere.
When I saw the outline for this record I did think it could go either way but there's something about the commanding way Litania deliver their Indian/Doom/Drone Fusion that caught my attention and kept it. An album to lose yourself in, this is a strong debut. 8/10
Sorry We Weren't Here Before – Forest Lights (Agoge Records) [Spike]
Let’s talk about the biggest disappointment in the metal punk underground this year. the sound of absolute zero, nothing, zilch. The press release for Sorry We Werent Here Before’s debut EP, Forest Lights, arrived with all the usual pomp and promises of Gothic Rock tension and Post-Punk brilliance. But the music itself. It was a magnificent, terrifying sonic black hole, by that I mean it was totally missing.
We received a folder sure. But when we hit play, we were confronted only with the chilling, total silence of complete nothingness. This track is a challenging listen, clocking in at approximately 30 minutes of a profound, existential void. We can only assume this was a deeply conceptual move, perhaps the band critiquing the entire music industry by making their statement about atmosphere through the absence of sound. If so, it’s derivative of John Cage, but with slightly better bass tone, hypothetically.
The rest of the EP followed this relentless, minimalist formula. Forest Lights itself offered no shimmering guitars, no throbbing bass. It was a vacuum, a necessary friction that only served to expose the chaos in our own heads. We can only imagine the kind of post-punk anxiety this track was supposed to invoke. We picture dramatic, ringing guitars that sound like The Cure if they only listened to Fugazi.
This phantom presence is utterly exhausting. Reviewing this album felt less like music journalism and more like staring into a broken modem for an hour. It is a bold, artistic gamble that utterly fails to deliver anything resembling a riff. Ok, ok, so someone forgot to attach the actual music to review so I could have left it there but that would have been unfair.
So The Actual Review As Of Course We Went and Found The Music
The joke above ended when we went and looked for the music ourselves, because frankly, a band with a name that good deserves to be heard. You don’t let a debut this promising get buried under a failed email attachment. We confirmed this Berlin trio does not, in fact, play a 30-minute track of silence. They deliver tense, charismatic Gothic Rock with genuine swagger. The single Vibrations Will Told is exactly the kind of pulsing, energetic post-punk that thrives in a basement club.
It’s got a deep bass throb, ringing, slightly distorted guitars, and charismatic vocals that ride the energy with poise. It sounds like middle-period Killing Joke stripped of the bombast. It’s tight, effective, and a fantastic debut that completely validates the decision to ignore the failed marketing campaign and search for the noise. This is exactly why we do this job: to bypass the garbage and get the good stuff the coverage it deserves. Go have a listen to this. 8/10
The Other – Alienated (Massacre Records) [Rick Eaglestone]
Cologne's horror punk legends return with their darkest offering yet – Alienated.
Right from the opening blast of Hellfire, it is abundantly clear that this is a band revitalized and ready to remind everyone why they are Europe's premier horror punk act. That addictive chorus hits immediately, and frontman Rod Usher's vocals have taken on an even deeper, more menacing quality. The man's always had a distinctive voice, but here he is leaning into the lower register with an authority that makes every word sound like it's been dragged up from some gothic crypt.
The return of founding bassist Andy Only clearly hasn't gone unnoticed in the band's sound. There is a bite to the low end here that gives these songs real heft, and when combined with the dual guitar assault of J. Ends and Van Tom, The Other have crafted a sound that is simultaneously nostalgic and fresh. They've stripped away some of the excess that crept into their more recent work and focused on what made them compelling in the first place.
I Give You The Creeps was the right choice for a lead single. It's got everything you want from The Other in one neat package—rapid-fire verses, a massive sing-along chorus complete with those essential "ohohoh" moments, and enough hooks to fill a meat locker - A Ghost From The 80s leans heavily into new wave territory with its keyboard parts, telling the brilliantly specific story of a ghost trapped on a VHS tape. It's camp, clever, and it has got that eighties vibe.
German-language track Hier Sein continues the band's tradition of including at least one song in their native tongue, and it's a melancholic stomper with tastefully harmonized guitars. Even if you don't speak German, the emotion comes through loud and clear.
In The End slows things down and lets Usher highlight the darker, more resonant parts of his vocal range. Following it with the raging opening of Horror Movie Monster is smart sequencing—Testament to the band's understanding of dynamics and pacing.
Whether it's the pulsating rhythm of The Witch From Outer Space or the up-tempo drive of Don't Be Afraid Of The Night, Boone provides the backbone that allows the rest of the band to shine - Die Human Die tackles the horror of reality rather than fictional monsters, and it's all the more unsettling for it.
The album closes strongly, and there is genuinely not a weak track in the bunch. From the infectious melodies that burrow into your brain and refuse to leave, to the perfectly judged mix of horror aesthetics and genuine darkness, Alienated is The Other at their most focused and vital. They have crafted an album that works equally well as a Halloween soundtrack and as year-round listening, which is precisely what separates the good horror punk bands from the great ones.
Alienated is heavy, catchy, and dark in all the right places. 7/10
Litania - Litania (Heavy Psych Sounds) [Matt Bladen]
Italian-Serbian psych stoner meets The Concert For Bangladesh on the self titled debut from Litania. Now you could call out "cultural appropriation" so many bands borrow influences from other cultures (look how many use Middle Eastern influences), also I'm not sure of the cultural background of any of the members so that approach doesn't fly and thirdly The Beatles did it so shut up.
Consisting of members from Elli De Mon, The Great Northern X, Collars and The Black Heart Procession, Litania are a band who love the drone, hypnotic repetition that is a core part of doom and Indian classical music. The psychadelic wanderings of the band are sustained by the layered distorted guitars of Marco Degli Esposti and the throbbing, insistent bass of Enrico Baraldi.
These two are the rhythm of this record, the power behind the mystical meandering, cranking out riff after riff of impressive and transcendental drone//doom, anchored back to the ground by Vladimir Marikoski's drums and percussion. On top of the noise are the vocal chants of Elisa De Munari, inspired by the words of Indian Ragas, she conducts these rituals with her hypnotic spell casting as well as adding sitar, dilruba, harmonium, and tanpura to further create the required atmosphere.
When I saw the outline for this record I did think it could go either way but there's something about the commanding way Litania deliver their Indian/Doom/Drone Fusion that caught my attention and kept it. An album to lose yourself in, this is a strong debut. 8/10
Sorry We Weren't Here Before – Forest Lights (Agoge Records) [Spike]
Let’s talk about the biggest disappointment in the metal punk underground this year. the sound of absolute zero, nothing, zilch. The press release for Sorry We Werent Here Before’s debut EP, Forest Lights, arrived with all the usual pomp and promises of Gothic Rock tension and Post-Punk brilliance. But the music itself. It was a magnificent, terrifying sonic black hole, by that I mean it was totally missing.
We received a folder sure. But when we hit play, we were confronted only with the chilling, total silence of complete nothingness. This track is a challenging listen, clocking in at approximately 30 minutes of a profound, existential void. We can only assume this was a deeply conceptual move, perhaps the band critiquing the entire music industry by making their statement about atmosphere through the absence of sound. If so, it’s derivative of John Cage, but with slightly better bass tone, hypothetically.
The rest of the EP followed this relentless, minimalist formula. Forest Lights itself offered no shimmering guitars, no throbbing bass. It was a vacuum, a necessary friction that only served to expose the chaos in our own heads. We can only imagine the kind of post-punk anxiety this track was supposed to invoke. We picture dramatic, ringing guitars that sound like The Cure if they only listened to Fugazi.
This phantom presence is utterly exhausting. Reviewing this album felt less like music journalism and more like staring into a broken modem for an hour. It is a bold, artistic gamble that utterly fails to deliver anything resembling a riff. Ok, ok, so someone forgot to attach the actual music to review so I could have left it there but that would have been unfair.
So The Actual Review As Of Course We Went and Found The Music
The joke above ended when we went and looked for the music ourselves, because frankly, a band with a name that good deserves to be heard. You don’t let a debut this promising get buried under a failed email attachment. We confirmed this Berlin trio does not, in fact, play a 30-minute track of silence. They deliver tense, charismatic Gothic Rock with genuine swagger. The single Vibrations Will Told is exactly the kind of pulsing, energetic post-punk that thrives in a basement club.
It’s got a deep bass throb, ringing, slightly distorted guitars, and charismatic vocals that ride the energy with poise. It sounds like middle-period Killing Joke stripped of the bombast. It’s tight, effective, and a fantastic debut that completely validates the decision to ignore the failed marketing campaign and search for the noise. This is exactly why we do this job: to bypass the garbage and get the good stuff the coverage it deserves. Go have a listen to this. 8/10
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