Style: experimental black metal, psychedelic black metal, dissonant black metal (harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oranssi Pazuzu, Blut Aus Nord, Ulcerate
Country: United Kingdom
Release date: 1 August 2025

A couple of my non-metal friends asked me the difference between black metal and death metal at dinner the other day, and I struggled to come up with a sufficient answer before finally deciding on “black metal focuses on atmosphere; death metal on bludgeoning.” It’s a drastic oversimplification, but how else would you describe the minutiae of extreme metal subgenres to people who would hear both as offensive noise? I was relatively proud of my off-the-cuff answer. British psychedelic black metal band Sea Mosquito certainly fit my miniature description of black metal as a wave of guitar, synth, and drums washes over the listener for forty-four minutes on Majestas. The record can be oppressively nightmarish, but without many distinct riffs, the atmosphere the group conjures is key to their success. 

The guitar parts function in the same manner as the synths—a background for the drums and rare lead guitars. From the swirly album opener “Organs Dissolved in Lacquer” to the dissonant closer “To Look upon Your Own Skeleton,” you are baptized in tremolo picking, awash in ambient synths. Occasionally, Sea Mosquito blesses the listener with a cleaner guitar tone, providing a lead above the murk like on “In Reverence of Pain.” Those moments with something more concrete to grab onto are godsends amidst the dark, hellish undercurrent. Beyond the guitars, the drums on Majestas are strong and dynamic. The drummer transitions between nice blast beats like on “In Reverence of Pain” to being the center focus like at 3:00 in “Organs Dissolved in Lacquer,” where he does monstrous cascading lines as if he provides the riff. While the rest of the band waffles about on their instruments, he carries Sea Mosquito’s inertia and rhythm—without him, Majestas has no movement.

Weirdly, Sea Mosquito leave the vocals drowning in the shadows while the acerbic highs would do well to create some clearer tension in their sound. When the vocals take center stage—the spoken harshes heralding the climax of “Ascension” and the spoken Arabic in the ghazal in “Ode to Wine” notably—are the moments when Majestas reaches its full potential. The lyrics, while difficult to parse except when vocalist Nuun switches into a more spoken register, are always interesting, contributing excellently to the cult-like atmosphere. My favorite track, “Ascension,” is elevated by its critique of postmodernism, with a crystal-clear uttering of “you will never feel the power of the sublime” leading into a bright, expansive, yet oppressive wall of sound as a climax. Many of the lyrics are inspired by Romanian religious scholar Mircea Eliade, and the literary slant is one of the album’s strongest assets in terms of atmosphere-crafting. 

But despite the many atmospheric strengths of Majestas, the emphasis on that aspect of their sound is the record’s downfall. Hardly a memorable moment is to be found in most of the tracks on the record, as it becomes an amorphous slog, more focused on textural style than songwriting substance. The album is nightmarish, psychedelic, and literary, yet the lack of sharp songwriting and forgettable riffs, while also mixing the vocals too low, is too much to overlook, leaving Sea Mosquito to be just another dissoblack album to add to the pile.

Recommended tracks: Ascension, In Reverence of Pain, Ode to Wine
You may also like: Decline of the I, The Great Old Ones, Haar, Omega Infinity, Noise Trail Immersion
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: I, Voidhanger Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Sea Mosquito is:
– Nuun – Voice
– Fas – Spirit
– Akmonas – Soma

The post Review: Sea Mosquito – Majestas appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artwork by: Costin Chioreanu

Style: Progressive metal, avant-garde metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oranssi Pazuzu, Ved Buens Ende, Enslaved (Monumension in particular), Arcturus
Country: The Netherlands
Release date: 13 March 2025

While in my daily life I tend to be a pretty goofy individual who tends to joke around in situations where one really shouldn’t (I once drew an apple and a pear on my real analysis in higher dimensions exam, said “pronounce: apple, pear respectively,” and proclaimed that they were manifolds—yes, I got full points), when it comes to music I am largely serious: I eyeroll over most of Haken’s and Between the Buried and Me’s whimsical breaks (the one in “Crystallized” might be the single most offensive section of music ever), and even in a genre like power metal which I adore, I tend towards bands who take themselves seriously like Virgin Steele or Angra over gimmick bands like Manowar or Sabaton. I do enjoy the goof sometimes, but it needs to be timed tastefully and the band has to deliver enough musical substance to back it up (Ethmebb my beloved). So, you tell me Cthuluminati, will this Tentacula entangle me in its wonders or will these silly tentacles touch me in places where they really shouldn’t?

Cthuluminati play a strange psychedelic brand of progressive black metal. While this combination of genres is by no means new—groups like Enslaved, Oranssi Pazuzu, and A Forest of Stars are infamous for this—Cthuluminati set out to make their sound as uncomfortable and bewildering as possible, borrowing their aesthetic from horror movie soundtracks while contorting their base prog black sound in a similar way to Ved Buens Ende with odd chord choices and unsettling rhythmic interplay. Their songs whirl and twirl in unexpected directions, relying on rhythmic modulations and ever evolving sound design to put you on the wrong foot. The latter is particularly impressive for how seamlessly black metal, psych rock, stoner, and post-metal guitarwork weave in and out to create a cohesive sound. And to finish things off, the vocal melodies tend not to be melodies as much as they creatively monologue in various shades of distortion, ranging from maybe-musical talking and Tibetan throat singing to raspy warbling and guttural screaming. The resulting sound is one of controlled chaos with dark psychedelia, somewhat as if Enslaved had figured out how to maintain cohesion in their excesses on Monumension. In short, Tentacula is an LSD trip not quite gone wrong but it’s definitely on the edge.

This sense of groundedness plays a large part of what makes Tentacula such a special record. For the most part, Cthuluminati deftly balance normality with their avant-garde tendencies. Opening track “Cthrl” exemplifies this approach, starting with spoken word and spooky synths before erupting in black metal riffage over a driving, almost danceable beat that slowly but surely contorts into disorienting psychedelia until you realize you’ve fully left familiar ground. But as you’re floating on the waves of Cthuluminati’s wicked imagination, they pull you back to the ground with impressive shredding and tom-heavy drumming, only to get weird again near the end with a full on psych rock escapade. “Abysmal Quatrain” similarly balances itself as it gradually builds from the uncanny into an almost normal post-black metal crescendo, and “The Illusion of Control” explores doom metal elements, giving rise to some very heavy, dramatic moments. However, “Squid Pro Quo” (song name of the year btw) does lose its footing at times by meandering for too long in slow, uncomfortable rhythms and creepy synths and vocal work while failing to provide sufficient comfort to the listener to balance it out, thus harming the album’s pacing.

Another way Cthuluminati toe the line between the normal and the avant-garde is in their song structures. The writing feels stream of consciousness at first, but Cthuluminati successfully instill a sense of order in their compositions by borrowing cues from post-metal in how they incorporate tension and release. In that sense, opener “Cthrl” is a bit misleading with how many things it throws at the wall. The following tracks all have a far stronger sense of identity: the slow and unsettling “Squid Pro Quo” borrows from 90s stoner rock redolent of Kyuss, “Abysmal Quatrain” is solidly embedded in post-metal, “The Illusion of Control” leans into cinematic death-doom, and closer “Mantra” is a ritualistic post-metal track recalling The Ocean with bonus throat singing. Not to say any of these tracks are easy—they all still have plenty of rhythmic mind benders and creepy sound design—but at least you know which song you’re listening to. However, like the quirky excesses of “Squid Pro Quo”, Cthuluminati do get lost in the sauce sometimes: the quiet middle section of “Mantra” meanders with too few interesting sonic developments, “The Illusion of Control” overstays its welcome a smidge with an unnecessarily long acoustic outro, and “Squid Pro Quo” isn’t ominous enough to justify its slow tempos. Fortunately, most of these are only minor mishaps in the overall experience.

All things considered, it’s safe to say that Cthuluminati do not rely on any gimmick to distinguish themselves. Tentacula is a bewildering album in all the right ways: clever genre mashups, challenging yet accessible arrangements, creative sound design, and tying it all together with compositions that strike a fantastic balance in being adventurous while remaining more-or-less grounded. Sometimes Cthuluminati do overindulge in their whims, but most of the time they remain on course to throughout whatever nightmare labyrinth they entrap themselves in. Tentacula is another shining example of why progressive black metal is one of the current most exciting genres around, and I recommend fans of curves and angles not native to this plane of existence to pick it up.

Recommended tracks: Cthrl, The Illusion of Control, Mantra
You may also like: Hail Spirit Noir, Schammasch, Murmuüre, A Forest of Stars
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

Cthuluminati is:
– Devi Hisgen (vocals)
– Rami Wohl (guitars)
– Stefan Strausz (bass)
– Seth van de Loo (drums)

The post Review: Cthuluminati – Tentacula appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: progressive black metal, psychedelic black metal, heavy psych (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Ulcerate, Inter Arma, Elder, Thy Catafalque, Author & Punisher
Country: Finland
Release date: 11 October 2024

Non-metalhead music nerds universally gravitate toward a weird selection of modern metal LPs to laud as future classics: Rateyourmusic, Pitchfork, Anthony Fantano, and the hipster kid in your English class will universally gravitate toward Blood Incantation (just last week), Ὁπλίτης, Trhä, Tomb Mold, Chat Pile, Ulcerate, and King Gizzard’s “metal” without fail. I’m conflicted. On the one hand, gatekeeping good metal isn’t my thing—it’s why I write here—but these weird echo chamber-y communities also are so strange and picky with their metal limited metal taste buds it can be frustrating seeing them pick up something but never explore deeper. The internet is weird how one can at once know underground Chinese blackened mathcore and also not care about any but a couple other metal releases of the year. It can also be weird as a fan deep inside the genre when you disagree with one of these picks to herald as something great. Yes, I want to see metal succeed outside of our community, but “really, that band?” is so often my reaction. 

Oranssi Pazuzu are another picked up by the music nerds: Anthony Fantano has reviewed several albums of theirs favorably in the past, Rateyourmusic has their previous two among their highest albums of their given years, and Pitchfork has whipped out a high score for them when most major metal albums don’t even get a mention. Unfortunately, I was left largely ambivalent to Oranssi Pazuzu’s sound while listening to their first five albums despite being the perfect band for me on paper, and I felt like I was missing out on something great; heck, even the people who don’t care about metal eat this crap up. A career of long psychedelic synth passages, extended jams, warped black metal, oddball progressions underneath snarling shrieks… I so desperately want to add another peculiar black metal band to the collection. Can the Finn’s new sixth full-length album in fifteen years, Muuntautuja, finally convince me I’m missing out?

In the past decade and a half, Oranssi Pazuzu have evolved little from album to album, always dabbling in a mix of Elder-y heavy psych and black metal, but Muuntautuja displays an uncharacteristic amount of growth over the past four years—deserving of its name translated as “Shapeshifter.” No longer writing stoner meanderings, Oranssi Pazuzu have more pinpointed focus with a newly added industrial electronica providing an apocalyptic atmosphere. Out of the gate, “Bioalkemisti” stutters glitchy synths in a percussive, noisy opening before their classic psyched out, fuzzy guitars hit. Shortly after (around 1:55), the track loses itself in a noisy cacophony; however, this is the strength of Muuntautuja when compared with previous releases. Rather than getting lost in pedestrian psychedelics—a wanna-be Elder or Pink Floyd but never convincing enough to help them stand apart from other fringe black metal acts—Oranssi Pazuzu now weaponize noise as their primary songwriting catalyst, providing an order of magnitude more edge. The hazy violence is more compelling. 

And through the chaotic sections, the newfound electronica underlying the band’s sound balances the disturbing sounds with an aberrant desire to dance through the primordial energy. The title track drips in Tangerine Dream synth sounds and an Author & Punisher-esque beat; the already mentioned opener has old school 70s prog Moog synthesizers; “Valotus” pulses with a serious groove from the heavier bass and more riff-forward attack. But the highlight of the album is easily the penultimate epic “Ikikäärme” which focuses on a crescendoing structure throughout its length, crafting a calamitous atmosphere with its gelid piano parts and ever-growing sense of unbridled energy. It’s the band’s magnum opus and their most complete piece of writing yet. 

Muuntautuja also keeps several variables from the band’s previous studio work, especially the sludgy production quality which loses lots of crisp detail that would be advantageous for the colder, more industrial black metal style. The album is also paced strangely: “Vierivä Usva” is an immensely disappointing closer after “Ikikäärme,” more pointless filler than anything. Moreover, other tracks can be slightly too free flowing in their psychedelia. Even though the mission feels clearer—to capture the cold, uncaring vacuum of space through their recording—some tracks are missing the focused songwriting that would create more stunning results. “Hautatuuli,” for instance, is too much of a meandering slow burn, and its atmosphere doesn’t make up for its unsatisfying climax. 

Overall, Oranssi Pazuzu are moving in the right direction, incorporating a wider blend of influences that blend together into a more compelling progressive and psychedelic black metal experience. Now what will the non-metal music nerds have to say about this one? Honestly, I think they’ll like it just as much as before. This is coolly heavy and dark, but it’s got an unmistakable groove and an air of controlled chaos with just the right level of progressiveness. It won’t be as huge as last week’s Blood Incantation release (interestingly also the first album of that band I really enjoy), but I’m certainly happy that Oranssi Pazuzu are worming their way toward the good hipster metal side of things.

Recommended tracks: Muuntautuja, Ikikäärme
You may also like: Dødheimsgard, Krallice, Imperial Triumphant, A Forest of Stars, Dystopia, Omega Infinity
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Nuclear Blast – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Oranssi Pazuzu is:
Evill – grand piano, vocals, effects
Ikon – guitar, sampler, synthesizers
Jun-His – the voice, guitar
Korjak – drums
Ontto – bass guitar, synthesizers

The post Review: Oranssi Pazuzu- Muuntautuja appeared first on The Progressive Subway.