Tom Cooksey

Portuguese metallers slow themselves down to a brawl

UK black metal outfit broaden their palette of misanthropy

Stoner/doom classic resurfaces once more

Dissonant noise fiends redefine the term ‘rank outsiders’

Perverse, experimental pleasures from Nordic noisemongers

Italy’s progressive deathsters find new glory in the gloom

Avant-doomsters perform multi-dimensional soul-surgery

Blake Judd rides out his highs and lows

So many rites, so much glorious wrongness

Swedish retro-rockers still feeling gravity’s pull

Gloomy Italians seek a way out of the Swedish-cast shadows

Polymorphously perverse Gauls rattle their box of tricks

Estonian folk metallers march into a stone wall

The upbeat if undistinguished sounds of the occult retro revival

Pagan black metal veterans still learning new tricks

Clotted UK doom with real clout

Black metal experimentalist gets his measurements right