Finnish death metal band Saasta‘s new single The Leeches is a grittily realistic depiction of present-day and past societies, in which the world’s small, blood-sucking elite – disguised as sirs and lords – rip everything from the common person, down to their very hope and health. The story can be seen as the complete failure of a beautiful future utopia. A human being works throughout their life only to be drained dry and thrown into a pit once they are no longer considered productive enough by the ruling elite. In the end, does a civilized society differ at all from livestock farming?
Musically, the track combines black and death metal in Saasta’s characteristic way, with death metal’s brute force ensuring that the black metal message reaches the listener’s deepest core.
The single’s cover art and the music video were created with a raw DIY spirit by Saasta.
–SRC: FI3FC2654201 –Composition & Lyrics by Topias Jokipii
Saasta is an extreme metal band from Kotka, Finland. Formed in 2020 the band combines the mercilessness of black and death metal, with the more subtle nuances of doom. The combination is dark and groovy metal with its own distinctive sound, where strong lyrical expression meets raw energy. Saasta is known for their intense stage presence and uncompromising effort.
DEATH DIES‘ new album “Maledicti In Aeternvm” will be released on April 3rd via My Kingdom Music and will be a journey into the blackest depths of Black Metal where light and hope end.
Today we unveil the cover artwork of the album realized by Maira Pedroni and the tracklist that is:
Il Bosco Siamo Noi
Asmodevs
Trivia Soteira
Mater Meretrix
La Casa Del Diaol
La Malcontenta
Patavinorvm Tyrannvs
Carmina Trivmphalia
Caron Dimonio
Destroyer
Recorded at Thorazine Music Studio and at Unhealty Recording studio, mixed and mastered at Deadferro Audio Project Studio by Daniele Ferretto, “Maledicti In Aeternvm” is the result of two years worth of blood and sweat. It is uncompromising extreme music and elite Dark Art in the name of the most ferocious, extremist and evil Black Metal.
The band takes the legacy of Primordial Black Metal and enriches it with devastating elements of Hard-core and Thrash Death Metal. All this leads to a fast, powerful, violent album… in short, “Maledicti In Aeternvm” is a creature that will sink into your flesh like a blade able of piercing your quiet existence.
This is DEATH DIES… the purest essence of Black Metal.
“Maledicti In Aeternvm”, out on April 3rd, is now available to pre-order in LP, digipakCD and Deluxe Edition from the following: https://t.ly/O-Q7U
Sodom’s, 1994 album Get What You Deserve didn’t stick to any of the rules of the era. “We just wanted to sound completely nuts — full-on, in-your-face madness – it was pure Sodom just not giving a damn. Especially not about what anyone else was doing. We wanted to do what felt right to us — raw, grimy, unpolished. Songs that would make other people cringe — that’s what we were after.”
The new single ‘Jabba the Hutt’ is one such track, and it may appear that it‘s named after a Star Wars character — but it’s actually about a real person. When asked about it, Tom Angelripper and Andy Brings respond in unison: “We won’t comment on that.”
The accompanying video is cut from archive camcorder footage of the infamous photoshoots for both the grotesque album cover of ‘Get What You Deserve’ and it’s preceding EP, ‘Aber Bitte Mit Sahne’ and provides a snapshot into the warped minds of Sodom in 1994!
Thirty-two years later, this snarling beast is being unleashed on the metal community once again. A timeless punch to the gut — or, as Maik Weichert, guitarist and mastermind of German metalcore heroes Heaven Shall Burn, puts it: “The best punk album of the nineties!”
Get What You Deserve will be released as an extensive box set, remastered and newly mixed by Andy Brings, including the remastered and remixed Aber Bitte Mit Sahne EP, plus the first concert with Atomic Steif as a bonus double LP and a DVD with additional live shows. Alongside the original hotel room cover, the package also includes the censored version with the band photo and the originally planned artwork featuring a Knarrenheinz painting by cult artist Andreas Marschall.
Get What You Deserve will be released on February 27, 2026 via BMG and is available for pre-order now.
Sodom’s deluxe, expanded reissue of Get What You Deserve is available in these formats.
Box set including 5LP’s on deluxe colour wax, book, poster and DVD.
Spain’s ferocious melodic death metal act BLOODHUNTER are back with a vengeance. Following their recent signing with ROAR – A Division of Reigning Phoenix Music, the band now present the first grim taste of what’s to come: their brand-new video single “The Devil’s Own”!
Forged in Galicia, BLOODHUNTER have carved out a strong position within the international extreme metal scene through uncompromising songwriting, intense live performances and a clear artistic vision. Fronted by the unmistakable Diva Satanica, the band fuse razor-sharp riffing, massive grooves and sweeping melodies with a fierce vocal attack and strong conceptual identity.
“The Devil’s Own” shows BLOODHUNTER pushing beyond familiar territory. The track blends oppressive heaviness with haunting melodic lines, creating an atmosphere that feels both brutally aggressive and eerily beautiful. It is darker, more personal and more daring than anything the band have released so far, while still hitting with unmistakable BLOODHUNTER force.
Visually, the accompanying video mirrors the song’s inner conflict and darkness, underlining the emotional weight of the track while embracing the band’s extreme-metal aesthetic.
Diva Satanica explains the intense personal background behind the song: “I wrote the lyrics while being on my last tour in South America with another band. It was a very intense period of my life when I had to take some of the hardest decisions in my career, so it speaks about that. It was one of our faves since the beginning because it’s very different from what we’ve done so far: it’s pure evil but with lots of beautiful melodies.”
After joining forces with ROAR, “The Devil’s Own” serves as a first harbinger of BLOODHUNTER’s upcoming new album, which will be released in the hopefully not-too-distant future. If this single is any indication, the next record will be the band’s most fearless and uncompromising statement yet!
From the ashes of Crown, rises a dark new wave of industrial rock. As Your Inland Empire, the duo of Stéphane Azam and David Husser take the heavy electronics that they first donned on Crown’s last album a step further into dark industrial rock, where vulnerability and violence converge in a single breath.
Today, Your Inland Empire are releasing a new video for their searing single “Edge of Perfection”. Driven by industrial punk aggression and hypnotic repetition, the song cuts into themes of domination, dependency, and societal fracture, pushing the album’s dark night of the soul to its most exposed edge.
“This is a song about power devouring humanity, about leaders who abandon their own people and push them into the margins” , saysYour Inland Empire vocalistStéphane Azam. “It reflects the raw cruelty humans are capable of, how easily empathy collapses, how suffering becomes invisible. This song stands for those erased, forgotten, and left to rot at the edge of a world pretending to be perfect.”
The accompanying video extends the song’s tension through a deliberate visual contrast. Spliced with the band’s performance filmed inside the Le Grillen venue in Colmar, France, are sequences of catastrophic and dystopian imagery. These opposing layers collide throughout the piece, framing the immediacy of human expression against the cold abstraction of mediated collapse. The result mirrors the song’s intent: individual bodies and voices pushed to the foreground while systems of power, erosion and indifference unfold relentlessly in the background.
Video Credits Directed by Brice Hincker (https://www.instagram.com/briceshc/). Light Design by Philippe Rust. Special Thanks to Le Grillen, Colmar.
YOUR INLAND EMPIRE are the renegade torchbearers who forged their legacy as Crown. Ready to ink a new chapter under Season of Mist – a voyage from legacy to evolution, an eternal metamorphosis. Baptized in the crucible of raw sound and industrial angst, Your Inland Empire transmutes the heritage into a daring quest beyond sonic realms once deemed unconquerable.
‘The End of All Things’, Crown’s last album under the moniker was an unexpected twist of what the band is capable of. Dark and moody, bleak and sublime, airy and crushing, mesmerizing and engrossing, bold yet unerring, danceable and suffocating – it was all of this at the same time. Fragile hook lines dancing above the bleak abyss they so magnificently assembled.
From the mechanized heart of Crown, Stéphane Azam and David Husser incubated a revolution, their vision crystallizing amidst rippling waves of eight-string guitars and a digital pulse – the lifeblood of their emerging beast. What began as Azam’s vision, a coalition with Zatokrev’s Frederyk Rotter, evolved with Husser’s induction – a synthesis of production prowess and visionary audacity that propelled Crown’s ‘Natron’ into uncharted territories.
Stéphane recounts, the steel in his voice betraying a relentless surge of creativity and rebellion. Crown was but the cocoon, a chrysalis composed of binary beats and distorted riffs from where Your Inland Empire would emerge, unfurling wings inked with passion and driven by the relentless heartbeats of bass drums galvanizing a new dawn.
It is no surprise that David Husser, one half of Your Inland Empire has a vast selection of experience under his belt. Working as a studio engineer, producer and musician across the globe with class acts such as Alan Wilder of Depeche Mode or Genesis’ original lead singer Peter Gabriel – David brought all that experience to meticulously construct a unique sonic palette. With industrial-drone collective Y Front, who in the 90s toured with Rammstein, Husser gathered the live experience needed to hone his craft to absolute perfection.
Paul Kendall (Mute Records, Nine Inch Nails, Nick Cave), an industry-titan who closely worked with David, explained: “a distorting diamond… we have collaborated on several projects, and I have been amazed by his ability to teach an old dog new tricks. He is simply the best recording engineer I have ever met.”
Stéphane Azam, Your Inland Empire’s other half, is its founding father all the way back in its Crown days. Having worked as live sound engineer for French blackgaze pioneers Alcest and the legendary black metal artist Abbath, Azam brings to Your Inland Empire another side of the music spectrum. With a wide ability to deliver both the most soothing vocals and bottomless shrieks, Azam is the perfect complement to Husser’s dark and brooding soundscapes. The two have been working together for years, and their chemistry is palpable on Your Inland Empire’s debut album.
Creatively, Azam composes every step of the way – crafting songs with a meticulous fury. From structure to guitar licks, basslines to vocal passages – Azam has a vision, and Your Inland Empire is his outlet. Being not only the producer & engineer, Husser crafts Azam’s wildest ideas into refined sonic textures. Together, they’ve crafted the perfect recipe of pure auditory experimentation, intricate songwriting, emotive lyricism and astonishing artistry – constantly pushing boundaries in a multitude of musical styles.
With David Husser (Guitars, Programming, Production) in command of the studio’s helm, and Stéphane Azam (Vocals, Guitars, Composition) orchestrating the chaos into harmony, flanked by Nicolas Uhlen’s (Drums) rhythmic prowess and Marc Strebler’s (Bass) stringed sorcery, the empire is poised for its coronation.
The alchemy of Your Inland Empire is not unlike the world’s relentless cycle – at once introspective yet ever looking outward, “It might be a bit more introspective and then it’s more about internal conflicts…”. This duality breathes life into their music, “The tracks are quite bright, nonetheless, even though the lyrics are really very dark.” It’s introspective – the shadow of our human instincts, our constant inner struggles. An album that is equally as personal for Azam as it is relatable.
A forecast for their impending album resonates with the echoes of an empire’s intimate fears and tenebrous hopes. The intricate fabric of Your Inland Empire waivers, promising a symphony drenched in the sweat of toil and the tears of artistic triumph. The orchestra of creation bellows, addressing the collective’s core, intricately showcasing their unique craftsmanship and unyielding drive.
Line-up: David Husser — Guitars, Programming, Production, Experimentation Stephane Azam—Vocals, Guitars, Songwriting, Experimentation Nicolas Uhlen—Drums Marc Strebler — Bass Guitar
Production Credits: Recorded & mixed by David Husser at La Grange Studio, France. Mastered by Jaime Gomez Arellano at Orgone Studio, Porto, Portugal.
Cover Art: Design & layout by Jeffrey V. Daniels.
Photography: Band photos taken by Jennifer Brachet.
Finnish purveyors of atmospheric heaviness HARMS have officially signed with Time To Kill Records for the release of their upcoming second full-length album, “Rebirth of the Cold”, with further details to be unveiled in the coming months.
With “Rebirth of the Cold”, HARMS move deeper into darkness: heavier, more melodic, and more aggressive than before. The music feels colder and more intense, built around tension and collapse, where moments of bleak beauty are sharpened and the weight of the band’s sound hits harder than ever. At times, their approach can be seen as an ingenious fusion of post-metal expansiveness, blackened contours and a fierce metallic hardcore edge, shaping a sound that is both emotionally immersive and physically punishing. Lyrically, the album continues their exploration of meaninglessness, emptiness, and decay, colored by reflections on time, space, and mortality: a meditation in grief, stripped of comfort and illusion, searching for what remains when nothing holds meaning.
Formed in 2017 in Lappeenranta, Finland, HARMS have forged a distinctive identity rooted in crushing heaviness, atmospheric darkness, and raw emotional intensity. Drawing inspiration from the endless cold and shadow of the north, the five-piece crafts sonic landscapes that shift between overwhelming force and desolate, melodic beauty.
Their debut album, “A Lifetime Spent on Dying” (2021), was met with strong critical acclaim, earning praise from Finnish media as “one of the strongest domestic metal albums of the year” (Kaaoszine) and for its “dark, crushing and impressively multifaceted take on modern metal” (Imperiumi).
With Time To Kill Records now backing their next chapter, HARMS are poised to push their sound further into inevitable ruin, delivering their most immersive and uncompromising work to date with “Rebirth of the Cold”. Further information on the release will be revealed soon.
Discography:
Eternal Frost Of The Northern Soul, double-single CD, 2018
A Lifetime Spent On Dying, full-length album, 2021
Rupture / Essence of Sorrow, double-single 8″, 2024
Line up: Juho Haikonen – Bass Jussi Loiri – Guitar, synth Viljami Rings – Drums Visa Tuovinen – Guitar, vocals Jussi Tyrisevä – Vocals
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
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Visionary artist KIMMO KUUSNIEMI's ANCIENT STREAMING ASSEMBLY (ASA) have released “Aurora Nuclearis”, a powerful 12-minute audiovisual experience, dedicated to the Late Keyboardist Esa Kotilainen. - Click image to watch the video
Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 