“To Conquer Eternal Damnation” is the sound of melodic death metal clawing its way out of the grave with conviction rather than nostalgia. It’s the kind of album that feels cut from the same cloth as mid-90s Gothenburg, but scoured with modern production grit and a distinctly Bay Area sense of weight.
“Think of You” moves between brightness and ruin, refusing to settle for harshness without melody or melody without edge. Its structural familiarity sometimes dulls surprise, but its passion and refined voice keep it compelling.
“The Bestiary” feels like a fever dream carved from stone and smoke, where heavy metal’s past is reborn as mythic theatre. It’s imperfect, sprawling, and utterly sincere and honest.
“Solastalgia” feels like the year’s slow descent into silence, with fallen leaves, fading light, and the ache of something ending. It may waver in pacing, but its sincerity and sense of place make it linger long after the air turns cold.
Blackbraid “III” strikes like a ritual lived out loud, a blackened odyssey that binds ancestral echoes. Its greatest strength is how it never lets the listener settle in its tension and its haunting voice.
“From Us With Hate” roars with enough speed, fury, and classic riffing to satisfy thrash purists, even as it occasionally leans too heavily on familiar blueprints.
“Defiance” is a hammer blow wrapped in poetry, part chainsaw-death, part atmospheric lament, testifying that Nightbearer are more than just worshippers of old Swedish death—they are its sharper, angrier evolution. The album stumbles just a few times in pacing and mix, but even those stumbles are over terrains of riffs and ideas worth stumbling over.
“Sorrow Falls” thrives on contrast, swinging from violent breakdowns to brittle interludes that feel like open wounds briefly exposed. It’s raw, uneven, and imperfect, but Blossom Decay’s honesty and urgency make it an EP worth bleeding with.
“Idaho” hits like a punch to the teeth and then tends your wound with surprising nuance, mixing pulverising riffs and speed with touches of folk, personal history, and community pride. It’s relentless and unforgiving, yet those cracks in the armor make the intensity hit harder.
“Asservis par l’espoir” is a bleak and ambitious debut that balances dissonant black metal with moments of fragile melody, all carried by anguished French vocals that cut like a knife.