Hailing from Greece, today we have an excellent Symphonic Metal newcomer with Mystfall and their debut release “Celestial Vision”. Featuring over 40 minutes of high-octane music, this release has all the staples of the genre to please even the most demanding fans. If you are a fan of Epica, Visions of Atlantis, etc., you will certainly love this release.

Opening with a dramatic orchestrated intro, the band really shines as it transitions to “Celestial Vision”. Showcasing polish and excellent instrumentation, alongside the talented vocals of Marialena Trikoglou, this outfit unleashes dramatic arrangements and tons of catchiness as they pummel through songs like “Centuries”, “Endless”, and “Silence”.

Following up an epic release such as “Echoes of the Soul”, is a hard job, luckily for us, Crypta manages to not only match the intensity but also surpass it with the killer “Shades of Sorrow”. Featuring 13 tracks and over 50 minutes of high-octane music, the band keeps leveling everything in their path to greatness.

Leading with the pummeling “Dark Clouds” after a short intro, we are instantly incited to mosh and headbang with the blistering guitar work of Tainá Bergamaschi and Jéssica Falchi. Chuggy riffs, crafty drums, and hellish vocals mark tracks like “Poisonous Apathy”, “The Outsider”, and “Stronghold”. All filled with intense tempo changes and waves of old-school DM mixed in with epic melodies and throbbing bass guitar lines.

Unleashing their characteristic levels of insane brutality, today we have UK’s Akercoke with their live offering “Decades of Devil Worship”. Like a bag of cement to the face, this release perfectly captures the band’s vicious and relentless musical onslaughts, delivering 64 minutes of some of their more hellish songs. If you never experienced the band live, this album gets you right in front of the action, making you want to start breaking things and moshing incessantly.

After the eerie “Conjuration” intro, the band fully discharges their punishing aggression with “Hell”, “Nadja”, and “Marguerite & Gretchen”. While the band’s sound is piercing, their technicality and execution is brilliant, making sounds sound very crisp and direct, as “Zuleika” and “Il giardino di Monte Oliveto Maggiore” demonstrate.

Hailing from Sweden, today we have a Symphonic Metal band that has been gradually taking the scene by storm: Eleine. With a very powerful and engaging sound, it is quite hard to stand out in this very crowded genre, but this band has managed to do so by creating highly enjoyable songs. With “We Shall Remain”, the band’s fourth full-length release on the heels of their most recent North American tour with Moonspell and Oceans of Slumber, the band is set to reach a whole new level of acclaim.

Opening with the powerful “Never Forget”, the pounding distorted guitars mean business as the band sets a very high-octane mood filled with catchiness. Led by the charismatic and talented Madeleine "Eleine" Liljestam, the band’s music perfectly fits her vocals, creating very powerful and diverse melodies that are sometimes flanked by harsh growls to amplify that duality of heaviness and melody. Tracks like “Stand by the Flame”, “We Are Legion”, and “Promise of Apocalypse” are perfect examples of that.

We sometimes wonder how the guys over at Hypnotic Dirge Records have such a similar music taste to us. From highly melancholic, to extremely experimental releases, this label has landed another winner with Urbain’s release “A Soul Purged”. Hailing from Texas, this band feels like a mixture of Vesperian Sorrow, Limbonic Art, with some splashes of Dimmu Borgir. With nine brilliant and high-octane tracks, this release is one of our early candidates for album of the year for 2023.

Opening with the release with the dramatic atmospherics of “Perception”, the mood is set very efficiently as the ravaging intensity of the guitar riffs is introduced alongside piercing shrieks and lush melodic passages. With an atmospheric transitioning track between each song, the band nicely changes the tempo and mood while preparing themselves to unleash aggressive onslaughts with a hearty balance of melody as we can hear in excellent songs like “Without Conscience” and “A Soul Purged”.

Hailing from Norway, today we have Eternity and their latest outburst of brutality titled “Mundicide”. With tons of Black Metal bands coming out of this country, it is easy to have a few fly under the radar, and what a mistake has been in this case. The band creates a very punishing and cohesive older school BM style with some modern shine, making the 43 minutes of music in this release quite vicious and well crafted. If you are looking to add another stellar Norwegian BM outfit to your playlist, Eternity is the one you have been waiting for.