Finland's melodic death metal stalwarts Omnium Gatherum have returned with what might be their most ambitious statement yet in the form of May The Bridges We Burn Light Our Way.
From the moment the opening salvos tear through your speakers, it's abundantly clear that they haven't come to mess about. The production is absolutely thunderous – crisp, powerful, and honestly sublime. Those twin-guitar harmonies soar like eagles over landscapes of blast beats and crushing riffs, managing to be both technically impressive and emotionally resonant.
Jukka Pelkonen's vocals are on top form – his harsh barks cut through the mix like a chainsaw through butter, whilst the occasional clean vocal passages add layers of depth with the rhythm, bass work and the drumming patterns from blistering to atmospherically restrained with the kind of dynamic awareness that really compliments every aspect of this and honestly by the time The Darkest City has finished its cycle I feel like I have picked myself off the ground is a puddle of adoration as for me this absolutely without a doubt encapsulates everything I adore about this album and lays to rest any slight reservations I had this release beforehand.
The songwriting strikes that perfect balance between immediate accessibility and long-term staying power. These are not tracks you will tire of after a few spins. There is enough complexity layered within to reward repeated listens, but it never becomes homework. It's that rare beast – an album that both the casual listener and the beard-stroking prog-obsessive can appreciate.
Although there isn’t a Megadrive in sight Streets Of Rage feels like a future live highlight but the crowning glory comes in the final captivating Road Closed Ahead as even is a mostly instrumental outpouring the band demonstrate the collective well of talent that really translates and resonates throughout.
Quite simply May The Bridges We Burn Light Our Way is a triumph. It is clearly an album that understands the past, lives in the present, and confidently strides toward the future. Omnium Gatherum have proven once again why they are at the top of the melodic death metal heap, and they've done it with style and substance throughout.
Vocalist Jukka Pelkonen adds: “The lyrics are about someone obsessed with being a hero—no matter the cost. Ego, blindness, dragging others down in the name of a personal crusade. We’ve all known—or been—that person.”
Essential listening for fans of the genre, and a perfect entry point for anyone curious about what modern melo-death can achieve when done by absolute masters of the craft. 9/10
Waldgeflüster – Knochengesänge / Knochengesänge II (AOP Records) [Spike]
Some albums arrive as moments in time; others feel like monuments. Knochengesänge and its companion Knochengesänge II, the new double opus from Waldgeflüster, are very much the latter. Four years in the making, this is a meditation on mortality, memory, and what it means to leave something behind. It’s music built from the earth itself: rooted, ancient, yet defiantly alive.
The first half (Knochengesänge) opens with Krähenpsalme, featuring Austin Lunn of Panopticon, and it instantly sets the tone, raw emotion threaded through intricate melodies, shifting between defiance and sorrow. Bamberg, 20. Juni follows with a folk-tinged melancholy that feels deeply personal, its layered guitars washing like sunlight through a forest canopy. There’s a tangible sense of space in the mix; it breathes, even in its heaviest moments.
Tracks like Der Kleinste König Und Sein Architekt and Von Hypnos Und Thanatos feel like companions, exploring the line between creation and decay. The guitars wind and climb, not so much leading as conversing, a theme that runs through the entire record. When Lethe – Der Fluch Des Schaffenden, featuring Alboin Of Eïs, arrives, it feels like the emotional centrepiece: an artist’s lament and triumph intertwined. The title track, Knochengesang, and the traditional closer The Parting Glass, round out the first chapter with quiet devastation.
Then comes the reflection, Knochengesänge II. Not a sequel in the conventional sense, but a mirror held at a different angle. The structure is echoed, yet the atmosphere changes, more subdued, introspective, as though you’ve crossed the veil and now see the same shapes refracted through memory. Das Klagelied Der Krähen and Frankfurt, 19. März open with a heavier sense of gravity, before The Little King And His Architect reinterprets its earlier counterpart, this time with Austin Lunn on drums. It’s a perfect example of how Waldgeflüster use variation to deepen meaning, revisiting the same story from another life.
Crusade In The Dark and In Lethes Fluten blur the line between black metal fury and post-rock contemplation. There’s beauty in how the band use contrast: distorted riffs crash like waves before receding into passages of quiet reflection. By the time Singing Of Bones and the closing The Parting Glass return, it feels like you’ve journeyed through loss, remembrance, and acceptance.
Jukka Pelkonen's vocals are on top form – his harsh barks cut through the mix like a chainsaw through butter, whilst the occasional clean vocal passages add layers of depth with the rhythm, bass work and the drumming patterns from blistering to atmospherically restrained with the kind of dynamic awareness that really compliments every aspect of this and honestly by the time The Darkest City has finished its cycle I feel like I have picked myself off the ground is a puddle of adoration as for me this absolutely without a doubt encapsulates everything I adore about this album and lays to rest any slight reservations I had this release beforehand.
The songwriting strikes that perfect balance between immediate accessibility and long-term staying power. These are not tracks you will tire of after a few spins. There is enough complexity layered within to reward repeated listens, but it never becomes homework. It's that rare beast – an album that both the casual listener and the beard-stroking prog-obsessive can appreciate.
Although there isn’t a Megadrive in sight Streets Of Rage feels like a future live highlight but the crowning glory comes in the final captivating Road Closed Ahead as even is a mostly instrumental outpouring the band demonstrate the collective well of talent that really translates and resonates throughout.
Quite simply May The Bridges We Burn Light Our Way is a triumph. It is clearly an album that understands the past, lives in the present, and confidently strides toward the future. Omnium Gatherum have proven once again why they are at the top of the melodic death metal heap, and they've done it with style and substance throughout.
Vocalist Jukka Pelkonen adds: “The lyrics are about someone obsessed with being a hero—no matter the cost. Ego, blindness, dragging others down in the name of a personal crusade. We’ve all known—or been—that person.”
Essential listening for fans of the genre, and a perfect entry point for anyone curious about what modern melo-death can achieve when done by absolute masters of the craft. 9/10
Waldgeflüster – Knochengesänge / Knochengesänge II (AOP Records) [Spike]
Some albums arrive as moments in time; others feel like monuments. Knochengesänge and its companion Knochengesänge II, the new double opus from Waldgeflüster, are very much the latter. Four years in the making, this is a meditation on mortality, memory, and what it means to leave something behind. It’s music built from the earth itself: rooted, ancient, yet defiantly alive.
The first half (Knochengesänge) opens with Krähenpsalme, featuring Austin Lunn of Panopticon, and it instantly sets the tone, raw emotion threaded through intricate melodies, shifting between defiance and sorrow. Bamberg, 20. Juni follows with a folk-tinged melancholy that feels deeply personal, its layered guitars washing like sunlight through a forest canopy. There’s a tangible sense of space in the mix; it breathes, even in its heaviest moments.
Tracks like Der Kleinste König Und Sein Architekt and Von Hypnos Und Thanatos feel like companions, exploring the line between creation and decay. The guitars wind and climb, not so much leading as conversing, a theme that runs through the entire record. When Lethe – Der Fluch Des Schaffenden, featuring Alboin Of Eïs, arrives, it feels like the emotional centrepiece: an artist’s lament and triumph intertwined. The title track, Knochengesang, and the traditional closer The Parting Glass, round out the first chapter with quiet devastation.
Then comes the reflection, Knochengesänge II. Not a sequel in the conventional sense, but a mirror held at a different angle. The structure is echoed, yet the atmosphere changes, more subdued, introspective, as though you’ve crossed the veil and now see the same shapes refracted through memory. Das Klagelied Der Krähen and Frankfurt, 19. März open with a heavier sense of gravity, before The Little King And His Architect reinterprets its earlier counterpart, this time with Austin Lunn on drums. It’s a perfect example of how Waldgeflüster use variation to deepen meaning, revisiting the same story from another life.
Crusade In The Dark and In Lethes Fluten blur the line between black metal fury and post-rock contemplation. There’s beauty in how the band use contrast: distorted riffs crash like waves before receding into passages of quiet reflection. By the time Singing Of Bones and the closing The Parting Glass return, it feels like you’ve journeyed through loss, remembrance, and acceptance.
Listening to both records together feels less like consuming an album and more like wandering through a shared dream. Waldgeflüster have crafted something extraordinary, deeply human and completely immersive. There’s no posturing here, no forced grandeur, just a band at full maturity turning grief and reflection into something transcendent. 9/10
Insidius – Vulgus Illustrata (Black Lion Records) [Martin Brown]
Vulgus Illustrata is not just another death metal record—it’s a statement of intellect antagonised into rage. Insidius approach philosophy, corruption, and self-destruction with precision, transforming ideas that could have become pretentious into something visceral and immediate. From the opening track The Perfect Slave, the album aligns immediately in the lineage of thinking man’s death metal—heavy, articulate, and unflinching.
The production is immaculate. Every note has definition, every strike of the kick drum feels engineered to hit without clutter. The guitars are tight and rhythmically sophisticated. They're never sterile, and ride balance between aggression and control that Poland’s scene has made its trademark. The bass punches through rather than sitting behind, anchoring the mix with the kind of weight early Hate Eternal or Decapitated built their reputations on. Vocals are raw but enunciated, snarled manifestos delivered with conviction rather than theatre.
Musically, the album is grounded in the tradition of precise, philosophical death metal—Vader’s focus, Morbid Angel’s turn of phrasing, Death’s structural intelligence—but Insidius make it their own through constant motion. Orgiastic twists between syncopated riffs and sudden rhythmic pivots; Censure builds tension through restraint before snapping into acceleration. Even the slower passages, like the brooding Abyssful Of Echoes, carry that same feeling of pressure ready to detonate.
What sets the record apart is its conceptual depth. Each song explores a facet of ignorance, control, and the decay of reason without collapsing into narrative excess. Doom Accelerator in particular stands out as a piece of social critique masquerading as war anthem. Its riffing mechanical, relentless, and disturbingly suffocating.
The pacing is deliberate. No wasted interludes, no filler. Insidius write like a precision engineer, with a philosopher’s disdain for comfort. The result is an album unified by tone and intent rather than gimmick.
Vulgus Illustrata is dense, commanding, and deeply satisfying. It captures what technical death metal should be—intelligent, punishing, and exacting in execution. 8 out of 10 feels right not because it lacks anything, but because it leaves you with the sense there’s more yet to come of even higher quality. 8/10
Denial Of Life - Witness The Power (Creator-Destructor Records) [Simon Black]
Starting life as more of a Crossover Thrash outfit, Washington State’s Denial Of Life have been around since 2019, with only one full studio album to their name to date back in 2022. This EP takes a slightly different turn however and feel more solid and meaty metal in tone from its predecessor, but that’s no bad thing.
These six tracks are brutally energetic and in your face - particularly vocally, with singer Brenna sounding like she may quite literally be screaming her guts out here, and that energy absolutely grabs you by the throat despite the lightness elsewhere in the mix. And these songs are really well crafted, not following s predictable arrangement and weaving, jumping and slamming you in unexpected, but in ear-worm like ways that you cannot help but nod along to. It’s really rather technically good, without actually sounding like that and it really forces you to keep your eye on their ball lest it smack you hard in the face.
This feel like the material is going to be hard, heavy and dirty live, but it’s let down by slightly from the production values that are more akin to a demo than a full studio product, but then this is an underground band and these things cost a shit tonne of money to do well, and what it does do is capture the raw edge of this band to a tee. Raw, energetic and thoroughly enjoyable. 7/10
Insidius – Vulgus Illustrata (Black Lion Records) [Martin Brown]
Vulgus Illustrata is not just another death metal record—it’s a statement of intellect antagonised into rage. Insidius approach philosophy, corruption, and self-destruction with precision, transforming ideas that could have become pretentious into something visceral and immediate. From the opening track The Perfect Slave, the album aligns immediately in the lineage of thinking man’s death metal—heavy, articulate, and unflinching.
The production is immaculate. Every note has definition, every strike of the kick drum feels engineered to hit without clutter. The guitars are tight and rhythmically sophisticated. They're never sterile, and ride balance between aggression and control that Poland’s scene has made its trademark. The bass punches through rather than sitting behind, anchoring the mix with the kind of weight early Hate Eternal or Decapitated built their reputations on. Vocals are raw but enunciated, snarled manifestos delivered with conviction rather than theatre.
Musically, the album is grounded in the tradition of precise, philosophical death metal—Vader’s focus, Morbid Angel’s turn of phrasing, Death’s structural intelligence—but Insidius make it their own through constant motion. Orgiastic twists between syncopated riffs and sudden rhythmic pivots; Censure builds tension through restraint before snapping into acceleration. Even the slower passages, like the brooding Abyssful Of Echoes, carry that same feeling of pressure ready to detonate.
What sets the record apart is its conceptual depth. Each song explores a facet of ignorance, control, and the decay of reason without collapsing into narrative excess. Doom Accelerator in particular stands out as a piece of social critique masquerading as war anthem. Its riffing mechanical, relentless, and disturbingly suffocating.
The pacing is deliberate. No wasted interludes, no filler. Insidius write like a precision engineer, with a philosopher’s disdain for comfort. The result is an album unified by tone and intent rather than gimmick.
Vulgus Illustrata is dense, commanding, and deeply satisfying. It captures what technical death metal should be—intelligent, punishing, and exacting in execution. 8 out of 10 feels right not because it lacks anything, but because it leaves you with the sense there’s more yet to come of even higher quality. 8/10
Denial Of Life - Witness The Power (Creator-Destructor Records) [Simon Black]
Starting life as more of a Crossover Thrash outfit, Washington State’s Denial Of Life have been around since 2019, with only one full studio album to their name to date back in 2022. This EP takes a slightly different turn however and feel more solid and meaty metal in tone from its predecessor, but that’s no bad thing.
These six tracks are brutally energetic and in your face - particularly vocally, with singer Brenna sounding like she may quite literally be screaming her guts out here, and that energy absolutely grabs you by the throat despite the lightness elsewhere in the mix. And these songs are really well crafted, not following s predictable arrangement and weaving, jumping and slamming you in unexpected, but in ear-worm like ways that you cannot help but nod along to. It’s really rather technically good, without actually sounding like that and it really forces you to keep your eye on their ball lest it smack you hard in the face.
This feel like the material is going to be hard, heavy and dirty live, but it’s let down by slightly from the production values that are more akin to a demo than a full studio product, but then this is an underground band and these things cost a shit tonne of money to do well, and what it does do is capture the raw edge of this band to a tee. Raw, energetic and thoroughly enjoyable. 7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment