Philly act Kaonashi have been grinding in the heavy underground for a long time. Originally formed in 2012, the band quickly gained popularity in the metalcore scene but before long, the trio began incorporating various elements of progressive metal and chaotic, 2000s-style mathcore into their sound. Now, 13 years later, Kaonashi have just released their latest album, I Want to Go Home, which concludes a story the band began telling years ago.

Decibel spoke with Kaonashi vocalist Peter Rono about I Want to Go Home, growing as a songwriter and the pressures of fan expectations. I Want to Go Home is out now.

You just put out a new record called I Want to Go Home. Is this thematically connected to your other records?
Yes, it absolutely is. It’s the fourth installment of our story about a ficitonal high school character that goes to a ficitnoal high school. This is the fourth and final installment of the Lemon House saga. The first one was in 2021, that was the debut LP on Equal Vision. Then it was the 2024 EP called The Three Faces of Beauty, then another 2024 EP called A Second Chance at Forever, and this is the fourth and final installment.

Do you feel in some ways then that this is the end of an era?
Absolutely. It feels like the end of an era—it’s the completion of something we’ve been working on for nine years. Everything we’ve done since 2016 has been focused on this story: the merch, the music, the music videos, the tour flyers, promo pictures, everything. This is completion.

These concepts and stories are things you’ve been working on since Kaonashi became a band with a bit of attention behind you, right?
It’s what took us to the next level. It’s what took us from junior to professional, amateur to professional. There is some anxiety behind it because it’s all I’ve focused on for so long, but there’s also excitement, because I saw the finish line from the start and I’m so glad I saw it through. I’m actually at the finish line.

You guys have put out a lot of music in a short time. What is the process of making these albums and EPs? Do you write while you’re on tour and let those songs evolve on the road, or do you write when you’re home and buckle down to get things done?
It’s kind of writing as we go along in the studio. We take old parts, we make them into new parts, but it’s mostly just dedicating studio time, going in and writing songs. This record, I Want to Go Home, is the only time we did pre-produciton. We went up, we wrote, we left and came back. That was a change on this album; everything before this album, we just went in and threw things at the wall and saw what stuck. I grew as a songwriter with this album because it was actually laid out [instead of] just writing things with no timeline.

The fact that this is the last installment, there are a lot of facts I had already set in stone that I had to refer back to. The completion of the story called for more prepared songwriting.

In some ways, watching from the outside, Kaonashi has slowly become a more progressive band over time, the songs have gotten more complicated musically and thematically. It’s a natural point to come to where you feel the need to increase how seriously you take it.
It got more serious. We’ve just grown as performers, as writers. I never planned on being this storyteller. I never wanted to be an author, but we’re writing a story. There’s characters, there’s events, there’s places and things. I can’t contradict myself so that just naturally came with it.

Kaonashi is a hodge podge of different genres. You started as a metalcore band, now there’s a lot of progressive metal and emo in there. Do you think being a band that’s hard to pidgeonhole has helped you or held you back at times?
I think it’s been helpful. To say hold back is very pessimistic; I don’t think it’s held us back. Anyone that wasn’t going to like it wouldn’t like it any more if we were simple. They were going to hate it regardless; it’s separated the real from the fake in a way. If you like us, you’ll accept us for who we are and we’re just eclectic people, we just take from a lot of places. I think it’s helped because it’s attracted the right audience to us.

When I see people talk about the band in person or online, people feel very connected to the music and to the stories. It seems like it’s landing with the audience it’s looking for.
It took years of refinement. We put it out for the whole world, half of the world said “no” and two percent of the world said “yes.” I feel like that process only comes from milling and touring over and over again, finding those people.

Would you say that extensive touring and doing shows with bands like Protest the Hero has affected the way you approach writing or doing things?
It absolutely has. Before, it was me just trying to beg the world: “Please listen to me. Please look in my direction, I make music and I promise it’s good enough for you listen to,” and now we truly have an audience.

I can’t lie, I write music for myself. None of it is contrived, but I have that in mind, the fact that there’s a kid in Scotland who has every record or a kid in Fort Wayne, who has a tattoo. These things are on my mind whereas that wasn’t even the case in the beginning. It’s inevitable I feel like, to have those things affect your writing. I just try to keep it as close to the source as I can.

The post Interview: Kaonashi Talk Touring, Songwriting and New Album, I Want to Go Home appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

New Jersey spawns its latest underground death metal behemoth in the form of Compulsed and their debut album, Amalgamated Anguish. Formed by current and former members of Waking the Cadaver, Ground, Corpse Hoarder and Embludgeonment, Compulsed are rooted in old-school brutal death metal, taking cues from bands like Disgorge, Defeated Sanity, Mortal Decay, and Afterbirth.

On their latest single, “Desolate Imprint,” they demonstrate that delicate balance of knuckle-dragging brutality and technicality. Speaking about finding that balance of sounds and how it represents the new album, guitarist Mike Mayo told Decibel:

“With our debut album Amalgamated Anguish, we wanted to combine our love of the classic early 2000s Unique Leader-style brutal death metal sound with the more progressive early 2000s Willowtip and Relapse Records-style deathgrind sound. We were heavily influenced by bands like Disgorge (US), Cephalic Carnage, Pyemia, Commit Suicide, Cryptopsy, Kalibas and Circle of Dead Children when writing this album. I think our first single ‘Desolate Imprint’ is a perfect example of what we tried to achieve with this album.”

Amalgamated Anguish is coming out on August 15 via Hibernation Release, P2 and Iron Fortress.

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Seattle metallic hardcore crushers Turian are back with a tighter sense of identity and an amped-up sound on their new album, Blood Quantum Blues. Everything is amped up on the new album, including a new focus on electronics and scathing, honest lyrics from vocalist Vern Metztli-Moon.

Both of those things can be heard loud and clear on songs like “Mache” and the title track, which marry brooding, emotional vocals with lively electronics that transition back to guitar-focused heaviness. The songs found on Blood Quantum Blues tend to be, on average, a bit longer than the songs on last album No Longer Human, but the songwriting is tight and the album moves briskly, thanks to guitarist Ryan Metztli-Moon’s jagged riffs and Vern Metztli-Moon’s throat-shredder vocals.

The vocalist spoke about how the album’s artwork, created by Diske Uni, ties into the themes presented in the music.

“I chose this piece because this album is about my navigation of the world as a Yaqui Indian. The Pascola dances represent ritual communication between Yaqui people and the Huya Ania (spirit world). This album is about my ancestors, acknowledging their unheard grief and our transcendental connection to one another. Blood Quantum Blues is about the transmission of ancestral grief spanning multiple generations of my family and my decision to confront and break cycles of destruction caused by colonial genocide. To see a Pascola illustrated in a sorrowful pose was striking since Pascolas are usually the ritual clowns.”

Blood Quantum Blues is an album that should appeal to hardcore and metal fans of many stripes. The songwriting is tight and punchy, made even sharper by the pointed lyrics and energetic performances. Wise Blood Records will release Blood Quantum Blues on June 6, but you can stream it now.

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Prayer of the Countess
The Making of the Third and the Mortal’s Tears Laid in Earth

Early ’90s Norwegian doom metal. Not something you hear every day. Communed from the same natural mysteries of the landscape that animated their black metal countrymen—forests, folklore, the cycle of seasons—Norwegian doom metal concerned itself with nature’s more inward-gazing aspects: less witching-hour midnight, more solemn dusk. Less diabolical full moons, more sobering sunsets—and in the case of one of Norway’s earliest doom purveyors, the Third and the Mortal: less nihilism, more animism. Understated and ethereal, sorrowful yet driven by strong progressive sensibilities, Norwegian doom officially ascended from the underground in August 1994 wrapped in shades of autumnal gold and liturgical purple, carrying a somber epitaph: Tears Laid in Earth.

The origins of the Third and the Mortal begin with Nightfall, a death/doom band from Trondheim that released a self-titled demo in 1990 before swapping down-tuned guitars and caveman death vocals for ethereal doom textures and the then-19-year-old Kari Rueslåtten, whose enchanting, classically-trained soprano voice, ethereal keyboard structures and poetry of snow and sorrow reconceptualized the doom metal sound.

The combination was an immersive one, bordering on the spiritual, and nearly impossible to get your hands around. Journalists perplexed by the band’s adventurous sonic worlds clumsily shoehorned Tears Laid in Earth into the death/doom canon. But was it death/doom? Most certainly not. Was it metal? Usually. Was it doom metal? Yes, but in an ethereal sort of way that shared as many textural aspects with the Peaceville sound as it did 4AD. It wasn’t the bashed-over-the-head tectonic doom of Winter or Saint Vitus; Tears Laid in Earth dwelled in a much more introspective and understated space. Think The Silent Enigma-era Anathema or The Angel and the Dark River-era My Dying Bride co-produced by David Gilmore and Tolkien.

Though embraced by the doom community, the Third and the Mortal’s arrival in 1992 (and subsequent touring through Norway through 1994)—also meant the band would rub shoulders with the then-embryonic black metal scene smoldering six hours away in capital city Oslo. Despite obvious sonic distinctions, the Third and the Mortal were not without their ties to the black metal universe, largely due to Slayer Mag founder (and essentially fifth member of Mayhem back then) Jon “Metalion” Kristiansen signing the band to his Head Not Found label in 1993. In other convergences, Mayhem/Thorns guitarist—and the guy who drove Varg Vikernes to Euronymous’ house that fateful night—Snorre Ruch played keyboards in the band’s earliest incarnation.

Tears Laid in Earth would go on to become wildly influential to doom and atmospheric metal post-1994 largely due to the positioning of vocalist Rueslåtten at the helm. Although the classically trained female voice was not unfamiliar to doom devotees by 1994—think Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion, Paradise Lost’s Gothic, Anathema’s Serenades—no one had yet built an entire sound around it. In doing so, Tears singlehandedly prophesied the seismic shift European metal would undergo in the last half of the ’90s when female-fronted bands like Holland’s the Gathering soared to massive commercial heights internationally. Tears also held heavy sway in funeral doom circles when fellow Norwegians Funeral (the band) took direct inspiration from it on their 1995 gloomy touchstone Tragedies.

The Tears-era Third and the Mortal lineup wouldn’t remain intact long enough to enjoy such accolades, however. Just four months after the release of the album, Rueslåtten would depart to launch a solo career that led to Grammy nominations and international celebrity. Reunited for several reunion shows commemorating the 30th anniversary of Tears Laid in Earth, we gathered the band’s original six members for a leafy stroll down memory lane. —Scott Koerber

Need more classic Third and the Mortal? To read the entire seven-page story, featuring interviews with the members who performed on Tears Laid in Earth, purchase the print issue from our store, or digitally via our app for iPhone/iPad or Android.

The post The Third and the Mortal – Tears Laid in Earth appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

It’s time to crush your way into the weekend with the new song and video from New York’s Concrete. Styling themselves as “crossover death metal,” the band embodies aspects of New York’s iconic hardcore and death metal scenes. An obvious standout for the track is vocalist Lenny Fletcher’s inhuman growls, in which delivers lyrics “standing against the forces that crush the vulnerable for their own gain, exposing the brutal truth of genocide, power and conflict.”

As the world seems to hold an inexhaustible supply of evils, bands like Concrete will always have plenty of inspiration from which to draw to make truly brutal and uncompromising art. Check out the video for “Chains of Oppression below.” The song is available on all streaming platforms as well.

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On May 30, La Suspendida are dropping La Suspendida Live, the recorded performance of the jazz metal opera at Le Forum (Vauréal, France) on November 16, 2023. The album is out via Excursus Production / Silent Pendulum Records.

La Suspendida LIVE by KILTER – ANDROMEDA ANARCHIA – GROWLERS CHOIR – SEVEN)SUNS – William Berger

The vision was brought to life by Laurent David, bassist and producer, who led his experimental jazz trio Kilter, which also features Kenny Grohowski of to collaborate with an incredible array of artists, including operatic soprano Andromeda Anarchia, the Montreal-based Growlers Choir, and the string quartet Seven)Suns. Stage direction was provided by Jacques David, illustrations are by Julie Castro-Grohowki, and the record a libretto penned by Metropolitan Opera’s William Berger.

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It’s been roughly half a decade since Völur‘s last album, Death Cult. The band, however, has been steadily working much of that time, kicking around ideas for their new album, a collaboration with Cares called Breathless Spirit.

Breathless Spirit draws inspiration from Icelandic myth. It’s both experimental and grounded in timeless metal benchmarks. Völur began working on the album in 2020 and refined it during and after the pandemic. The album, named after the Inuit artwork on the cover, fuses elements of doom, free jazz, black metal, traditional Irish and Iranian folk melodies, and Bolt Thrower-inspired riffs. And yet, it’s accessible and takes listeners on a journey. There are moments of striking beauty and terror as well as superb dynamics and nuance.

Decibel is delighted to premiere the title track from the album today – Völur’s first new song in roughly half a decade. Breathless Spirit is available for preorder in a die-hard edition that includes a bag of tea (not weed) for a “fully immersive listening experience” along with a 7″ featuring Völur/Cares and Bowed Arts.  As you listen to the track, read an interview with Lucas Gadke (bass and vocals) and Laura Bates (violin and vocals).



Why did you decide to premiere this track? Is it a representation of the new music?

GADKE:  We were happy with that first section and happy with the big punch at the beginning. It comes in with almost like a Bolt Thrower riff and showcases what we’re about. The drum fills (courtesy of drummer Justin Ruppel) get longer and longer, eventually turning into something freely improvised. Hopefully, listeners are drawn in by the riff and stay along for the ride, which shifts moods and vibes.

BATES: I remember premiering something from Death Cult. Some reviews said that they made it through the first 20 seconds or so (laughs). They didn’t even get to the heavy part, and they’re like: “What is this? It’s not heavy music, you know?” If possible, we’d like to diversify our audience. Breathless Spirit is a good way to showcase that.

The album is named after the Inuit artwork on the cover. Can you tell us more about it?

BATES: My partner at the time (of writing the album) was a specialist in Inuit art. Breathless Spirit is an Inuit print by Saimaiyu Akesuk. It accompanied me through a tough couple of years. It’s so hard to make art when you’re in survival mode, but this print nourished me in a way I can’t explain. It went on to become the name of the album.

A printing plate is used, much like a linocut, to create a carved relief image for the art. It’s a collaboration between the artist and the printmaker. A thin, handmade Japanese paper is placed on the inked stone. They then print only 50 copies, and then the stone is ground flat. I like the impermanence of it – there are only 50 of these prints in the world.

Death Cult came out in 2020. Did any of this music start coming together during that time, or did you guys just shut out the band entirely and do other things during the pandemic?

GADKE: I’d say sixty percent of the music was written before lockdown. It was recorded slowly through lockdown. It was intended to be a shorter EP, but after we finished working on it and James (Beardmore of Cares) did his pass, I felt that it needed to be longer. Time got away from a lot of us over the pandemic, and there were a lot of questions about how to get together.  Over the next two years, we wrote more music and came up with an album that we were proud of.

BATES: Some of it was done remotely. “Breathless Spirit” and “Windbourne Sorcery” became so monstrous that we had to book proper studio time. It was just beyond our engineering capabilities. We rented a studio and an engineer.

So much grief and horror visited all of us when the pandemic kicked in. Did that change any of the material as you continued to build on these songs? And if so, how? 

GADKE: The key text that influenced this is Grettir the Strong, which is an Icelandic family saga. It tells the story of a man who becomes an outlaw due to his headstrong and reactive nature. It puts him on the wrong side of many people. He’s a beloved character nonetheless. He’s also cursed with a fear of the dark.

As the years pass, he becomes increasingly ostracized from society and grows more afraid of the dark. His loneliness and isolation are amplified throughout this saga. The isolation contributed to the record’s darker tone, especially on some of the tracks, which are quite bleak. 


This album is sophisticated and has many layers, but you don’t stray listeners.  There are gold coins that keep listeners on the path. I’m wondering if that was intentional. 


GADKE: I think I learned how to tighten up concepts.  You can indulge in different things here and there that kind of please the music nerd itch. This band has always been about contrasts. If you want to do a section with instruments from other cultures, you can do that. However, the contrast is a heavy riff that comes in hard. For me, it was about getting enough for myself to keep it interesting, but not to the point where people would feel pushed away, as if all this was just another weirdo prog band.

BATES: Anything that’s weird time-wise, I felt like we came by it naturally. We didn’t make it weird on purpose. It’s just sort of how it comes out compositionally. 

What is next for the band in the next six to 12 months?

GADKE: We’re going to play shows. We’re booking some out-of-town shows and will announce our upcoming Toronto shows soon. The next big thing will be a large-scale project. A lot of stuff is written, but we need some funding to get underway. 

The post Track Premiere and QA: Völur/Cares: “Breathless Spirit” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Boston. Chicago. Nazareth. Berlin. Asia. Miami Sound Machine. All bands that have drawn their names from locations on a map. Add Nottingham’s Tigguo Cobauc to the list. According to Wikipedia, “Nottingham was described as ‘Tig Guocobauc’ in Old Brythonic, meaning ‘place of caves’, by the Welsh Bishop of Sherborne Asser in his The Life of King Alfred” (pub. 893). With a love for their home, the proximal city of caves (which is now a tourist attraction, natch) and doomy, sludgy, blackened metal with a flair for all things ‘post’ and luxurious, the quartet are in the early stages of promoting the release of their second full-length, A Fountain of Anguish is Gone which was issued last month. Part of that includes the premier of the video for latest single, “Ascended Deliverance”

When asked, the band had this to say about their latest creation: “From the shadowed depths of Nottingham, we, the Enochian metallers Tigguo Cobauc, rise once more to unveil a reimagined version of one of our most captivating and otherworldly album tracks. Known for our ability to fuse haunting melodies with the raw, unrelenting energy of metal, we invite you to step deeper into our sonic realm, where ancient chants and dark, brooding atmospheres converge. This new version of the track takes you on an even more immersive journey, shifting, evolving, and casting an ethereal spell that resonates with the very core of our unique sound.”

More details on the track, taken from their Bandcamp page: “‘Ascended Deliverance”’represents an evolved reimagining of the track ‘Deliverance’ from [the] album. This new vision emerges from the collective effort of Tigguo Cobauc, featuring guest vocalists Chelsea Marrow (Voraath, Visitant) and Craig Phillips (the new voice of Tigguo Cobauc). For the collective, it marks a significant rebirth, a transformative chapter in their creative journey.”

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Grab an earful of the bewitching debut, Sorrows, from Scottish gothic doom outfit, Cwfen (pronounced “coven”). This female-fronted quartet—Agnes Alder (vocals/rhythm guitar), Guy DeNuit (lead guitar/backing vocals), Rös Ranquinn (drums), Mary Thomas Baker (bass)—has mined the sorrowful gloom of Type O Negative and swirled it together with some post-metal spaciousness and classic UK doom. Sorrows is at turns rage-filled, hypnotic and eternally dark. There’s a lot happening in a mere 10 tracks.

Sorrows was produced by Cwfen and Kevin Hare at Deep Storm Productions, and it was mastered by James Plotkin. It’s set for release on vinyl, CD and digitally on May 30 via New Heavy Sounds. Place your order here or here. Also, if you live in the UK, check out the upcoming live dates in June with L.A. doom trio Faetooth (listed below the Bandcamp player).

Vocalist/guitarist Agnes Alder had this to say about Sorrows:

“Sorrows comes from a place of contrasts. Feral and tender, expansive and restrained. Cwfen have always been drawn to that tension: melody and weight, beauty and collapse. That’s been shaped by our live performances, and an intensity and rawness that can easily disappear in the studio. Capturing that was important to us. There are elements of doom, post-metal, and shoegaze in it, but we never set out to write to a genre. We just followed what felt honest and this is what came out. The guitars are thick and textured, sometimes glacial, sometimes soaring, while the rhythm section gives the whole record its spine. Insistent, driving and deliberate, adding heft and weight. Vocals were recorded handheld and in motion, pacing, crouching, reaching, because singing never felt like a static act. It needed to move, to breathe, to unravel. There’s grief in this record, but also reverence, awe, and space. We weren’t aiming for perfection. We just wanted to make something that felt lived-in, emotionally true, and capable of holding quiet as much as noise. Something that leaves a mark.”

Sorrows by Cwfen

CWFEN Live dates with Faetooth:

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