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Record(s) o’ the Month – March 2025

By Steel Druhm

March was two long months ago (and change), but it seems like only yesterday when you exist in the AMG timestream. That’s because all those goddamn 3.0 trees outside AMG HQ tend to warp space and time, making a prompt running of certaintime-sensitive blog features akin to a holy war against science itself. March may not have been the most exciting release period for metal, but it had a few clear high points to get geeked up about. We kicked tires and weighed souls and came to the well-reasoned conclusions below. Accept them as your own, and nobody needs to see my Banhammer.

In an age where melodeath can sometimes feel overexposed and tired, there are still acts out there that can make it crackle and hum. Aversed are one such band, taking a progressive melodeath sound and running it through the Berklee School of Music filter. Sophomore opus Erasure of Color is far from black and white in its florid riffage and stellar musicianship led by mastermind Sungwoo Jeong. There are traces of the heroic guitar work of Jeff Loomis and hints of Nevermore and the In Flames / Arch Enemy school, along with bits of core and classic metal idioms. This all coalesces into an intriguing mulch with plenty of twists and turns. As an impressed Dolphin Whisperer summed up, “Alas, it’s easy to love the best of what Aversed has to offer with Erasure of Color, its clanging rhythms and finessed guitar weeping sticking readily to memory with its most careful hooks.” Melodelicious.

Runner(s) Up:

Imperial Triumphant // Goldstar [March 21st, 2025 | Century Media Records | Bandcamp] — Call them the “cool kid” act or the darlings of the pretentious elitist set, but Imperial Triumphant won’t go away, and they keep the metalverse bickering and feuding. Their music is dense, chaotic, and rarely user-friendly, but there’s no denying the talent and raw creativity these golden masked weirdos bring to the coven. Crazy grooves, off-kilter rhythms and tempos, and strange choices spew across every gilded inch of Goldstar, but there are undeniably memorable moments too. As a confused but convinced Al Kikuras gasped, “At this stage, it would be a disservice and disrespectful to call Imperial Triumphant ‘jazz-influenced metal’ or black or death or any kind. They have transcended all those genres to forge a new medium, and over the sleek 38 minutes and 15 seconds that comprise Goldstar, they massage the listener to accept it.” Embrace the massage.

Nephylim // Circuition [March 7th, 2025 | Self-released | Bandcamp] — For the very first time in blog history, an AMG Unsigned Band Rodeö entry makes it to the big leagues! The little band that could, Nephylim shocked the AMG crew with a highly polished and mature dose of gloomy melodeath with echoes of Omnium Gatherum, Edge of Sanity, and Enshine in its DNA. Larger-than-life atmoscapes power the material on Circuition, while a poise you wouldn’t expect from an unsigned act guides the ship steadily. The good stuff here is really good indeed. Opinions on just how good differed among the mostly impressed staff, with Kenstrosity gushing, “Experiencing this, as much as I pine for new material from those great acts that Nephylim remind me of, I know in my soul that Circuition is one of 2025’s foremost contenders.” Unsigned but mighty.

#2025 #Aversed #Circuition #DawnOfOuroboros #ErasureOfColor #Goldstar #ImperialTriumphant #Nephylim #RecordSOTheMonth

Flummox – Southern Progress Review

By Kenstrosity

Originally slated to be my main Thing You Might Have Missed feature, Tennessee avant-garde metal quintet Flummox’s fifth LP Southern Progress caught me completely off guard. Attracted to the prompt “their most obnoxious album yet,” I wasn’t sure what to expect from my first exposure to Flummox’s work. I figured it might be weird, but it’s also distinctive, fun, and infectious. Fearlessly creative, deeply detailed, lyrically cutting, and stupidly intelligent, Southern Progress rapidly became my favorite record released so far this year. It doesn’t seem likely now that anything out of the metalverse this year will surpass it.

Southern Progress embodies a rhizomic system of inspirations and influences that, when harnessed by Flummox’s wacky brains, emerges from the soil as something wholly unique in style, sound, and intent. My best attempt to contextualize this material would involve names from the progsphere like Fair to Midland, Native Construct, Pink Floyd, early Queen, and Mike Patton; purveyors of the extreme such as Strapping Young Lad and Slugdge; avant-garde touchstones like Mr. Bungle, Igorrr, and Diablo Swing Orchestra; genre-jumpers such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard; and even cinematic composers like Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer.1 Ultimately, though, there is no comfortable comparison. Flummox are a singular entity of weird, wild, theatrical metal capable of nailing every bizarre idea they throw at me, such that in less than a week, I had a majority portion of Southern Progress’ 57-minute runtime pinned to my psyche. All the while, its candid exposition of the queer and genderfluid experience in the Bible Belt (“Southern Progress”) struck a chord so rarely plucked by music on this sphere, and its inspired exploration of the neurodivergent experience as one of its parallel plot lines (“Executive Dysfunction”) gave me an easy avenue to resonate even more deeply with its voice.

The tricky reality of Southern Progress is that 750 words is woefully insufficient to encompass all that Flummox achieves, but its primary triumph is in universal songwriting excellence. Music like this marks a once-in-a-blue-moon occasion—and an ambitious undertaking—but Flummox makes it look effortless as they balance the beauty of melodious, theatrical compositions with the livid, frothing rabidity of searing, off-kilter riffs, thunderous rhythms, and revolutionary attitude (“Southern Progress,” “Femto’s Theme,” “Long Pork,” “Executive Dysfunction”). While these elements are familiar to anyone with experience in the metalverse, their twisted forms instead leave a vivid impression of something altogether more eccentric and uncanny (“Southern Progress,” “Nesting Doll,” “Locust Eater,” “Coyote Gospel”). Well-defined structures and concrete themes play their part in making sure these warped representations stick. Presenting every unhinged idea, cynical line, and explosive outburst inside a digestible package makes Southern Progress somehow even stranger and more enthralling for its deceiving accessibility (“What We’re In For…,” “Always Something Going Down,” “Siren Shock,” “Flumlindalë”).

In spite of its unquestionable adoption of metallic methods, Southern Progress is an intensely theatrical affair unfit for the genrephobic, but is nonetheless something everyone should experience at least once. Challenging in a different way than Imperial Triumphant or other known creators of what certain pundits call “not music,” Flummox is similarly fearless in their exploration of style and technique, and equally meticulous in application and execution. To that end, Southern Progress’ music is mutated and maniacal, but grounded through several root elements: emotional depth, societal awareness, thoughtful critiques, and artistic integrity. More than just a vehicle for that cogent societal commentary, the potent passion that each member of Flummox hemorrhaged into Southern Progress is unmatched by all except the unfuckwithable technical quality of their writing and performances. The fact that this intangible factor boasts such strong presence inside of, and coalesces so harmoniously with, the tangible product proves that Flummox’s dedication, attention to detail, and intentional artistry contributes meaningful substance and significance not just to Southern Progress on its own, but also to the greater body of metal as we know it today.

It is for this reason that Flummox’s Southern Progress isn’t just an excellent album, but also an important one. Aside from its high artistic merit, Southern Progress is a timely and fierce challenge against the dehumanization of queer, gender-nonconforming, and even neurodivergent communities across the American South—and, by extension, the country—especially by organized religious (read: Christian) entities. But it’s also a celebration, a triumphant expression of pride and love and resilience that only comes from openly and unashamedly discovering, struggling with, and ultimately embodying all that you are in spirit, body, and mind. Everyone deserves to know this feeling without fear of stigmatization, fetishization, violence, or isolation. Southern Progress is an unorthodox and fun, but wildly effective, advocate for that cause.

Rating: Excellent!2
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Needlejuice Records
Websites: flummoxed.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/flummoxband
Releases Worldwide: April 11th, 2025

#2025 #45 #AmericanMetal #Apr25 #AvantGarde #BlackMetal #DannyElfman #DeathMetal #DiabloSwingOrchestra #ExperimentalMetal #FairToMidland #Flummox #FolkMetal #Gospel #HansZimmer #Igorrr #ImperialTriumphant #KingGizzardAndTheLizardWizard #MelodicMetal #MikePatton #MrBungle #NativeConstruct #NeedlejuiceRecords #PinkFloyd #ProgressiveMetal #Queen #Review #Reviews #Slugdge #SouthernProgress #StrappingYoungLad

Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar Review

By Al Kikuras

When last I returned to the review writing foray I was perhaps a bit over-zealous in awarding a 4.5 to The Haunted’s Exit Wounds.1Almost seven years to the day since my last review shat the bed here at AMG, the question lingers in my now over half-a-century older brain… will I make the same mistakes again now as an equally-excited antiquarian? There is no better band to test this theory than the very of-the-times Imperial Triumphant, the talented and divisive trio out of New York City that split opinions as drastically as if congestion pricing makes a visit to Wo Hop worthwhile. This triumvirate have taken us on quite a journey in their 20-year tenure, as my brethren Grymm and sistren Madam X have previously covered. I find myself poised to attempt to address if their sixth full-length, Goldstar, lives up to the accolades of the title and tagline “Nine Class ‘A’ Songs.” The answer to both of these questions?

“TBD,” as the kids like to abbreviate everything these days. My kids can’t answer any questions directly, they always want to “LMK.” Why the rush? IDK, but rather than jabber on like a monkey in a tree I’ll try to cut through the treacle. As if to parse things back for those with a short attention span, Goldstar finds our protagonists more palatable than past outings but no less adventurous. The already initiated may bristle at what one might consider more “accessible” material, but that, in and of itself, is what I feel IT has always set out to do – challenge the listeners, even those of the most dedicated who think they know what to expect. Rather than dumb things down, like the cruelest of Cenobites, these maniacs have reinforced their craft with the sharpest of hooks, not pulling the listener in a baker’s dozen directions like Frank Cotton’s flesh, but rather giving us even more meat to chew on.

Moments like the quirky, waltz-like drum intro to “Gomorrah Nouveaux” that turns on a dime into a foul, menacing, nefarious groove, live rent controlled in my head. No, not rent free… RENT CONTROLLED. These guys being from NYC know that free rent is not a thing there, nor in my brain with what little vacancy I have at my advanced age. The lulling interlude title track comes after one of the most frenetic bursts of their career, the 47 seconds of “NEWYORKCITY” showcasing the frantic shrieks of constant special guest Yoshiko Ohara. Rather than feeling like an abrupt turn in the back of a Yellow cab careening down Avenue A at 50 miles an hour, it serves as an oasis amidst an ocean of mayhem with its big band 1920s-era vocals and tobacco giant jingle. As lulling and gorgeous as that melody is, IT also manages to bring moments like that into their most monstrous. Bass, guitar, vocals, and drums drenched in reverb and echo unified as a glorious and horrifying chorus seamlessly transitions from “Lexington Delirium” into “Hotel Sphinx.” Like watching a tornado devastate a small town, there is beauty in the terror that these mages conjure. While there are nods to their progenitors like Gorguts, Voivod, Mr. Bungle, Zappa, and Zorn, there are no lifts, besides the four-minute meditation on the first real metal riff ever recorded from The Beatles’ 1969 “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” that closes out the album.

Many modern metal bands push the envelope with new levels of technicality and ferocity. As modernists, IT are writing an entirely new novel where the story isn’t how fast a blast beat, how great a guitar riff, how fluid a bass run or how guttural a vocal is. The confluence of all these things is what’s at the heart of Imperial Triumphant’s distinct sound . As the quotes from Marshall McLuhan declare in the opening track “Eye of Mars,” the medium is the message. Are you going to call Zappa’s The Yellow Shark or Zorn’s Angelus Novus “jazz-influenced classical” because they don’t sound how you expect classical music to? At this stage it would be a disservice and disrespectful to call Imperial Triumphant “jazz-influenced metal” of black or death or any kind. They have transcended all those genres to forge a new medium, and over the sleek 38 minutes and 15 seconds that comprise Goldstar, they massage the listener to accept it. As with any new medium, just as many will find it irritating as will embrace it.2

Rating: 4.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Century Media
Websites: imperialtriumphant.bandcamp.com | imperial-triumphant.com | facebook.com/imperialtriumphant
Releases Worldwide: March 21st, 2025

#2025 #45 #AmericanMetal #BlackMetal #CenturyMedia #DeathMetal #Goldstar #ImperialTriumphant #Mar25 #Review #Reviews

Tommy Concrete – Unrelapsed Review

By Ferox

Written By: Nameless_N00b_87

Scottish solo artist Tommy Concrete (aka Tomas Pattison) has a proclivity for creating music that is experimental, rebellious, and seldom boring. Since 2001, the avant-garde musician has self-produced a surplus of releases dipping into punk, progressive metal, doom, black metal, hardcore, industrial, and almost everything in between. 2021’s Hexenzirkel found the Scot experimenting with epic long-winded prog compositions á la Devin Townsend. It was received negatively by AMG’s resident Frog. Fast forward three years and Tommy is back to give it another go with his tenth full-length Unrelapsed,1 and this time he’s using blackened hardcore as a therapeutic means to cope with his struggles with addiction. Considering Tommy’s affinity for genre-hopping and complicating his music, I approached Unrelapsed with the hope that he had found a more focused sound.

Unrelapsed proves that old habits die hard. In typical Tommy fashion, the epic prog of Hexenzirkel has been napalmed by an eclectic mix of blackened hardcore that oscillates between industrial (“Anger”), black metal (“Denial”), thrash (“Ambivalent”), drum and bass (“Depression,” “Unrecognisable”) and even trip-hop (“Debt”).2 For Unrelapsed’s thirty minutes, Tommy blazes through twenty-two songs of short, emotionally violent arrangements that are frenzied and chaotic. Tommy’s guttural and dissonant vocals convey hostility (“Psycho”), anguish (“Relapse”), depression (“Blame”), and even desperation (“Lost”) as they drift over technically proficient—yet asymmetric—instrumentation that fuses Imperial Trimphant’s experimental chaos with The Locust’s breakneck fluctuations. Piercing drums—with enough snare to wake the dead—form the core of Tommy’s madness, sitting center stage in a peaking mix as the interplay of effects, subtle organ passages, and meandering guitars further amplify the intense emotions that beleaguered Tommy’s journey to sobriety. Together, these elements forge an intensely personal record rooted in adversity, reflection, and catharsis.

Intense and personal may be the point, because Unreleapsed is a whirlwind of chaos and disorder. Tracks like “Paranoia” and “Abandoned” arrive and disappear rapidly without any sense of direction. Many others barely hold any semblance of song structure before buckling under their own weight and crumbling into audible storms of phaser (“Lying”), odd noises (“Blackout”), wandering guitar (“Unrecognisable”) and hectic beats (“Depression”). And in the instances when Tommy manages to settle into a coherent song structure for longer than thirty seconds, he frequently derails everything with nomadic jazz fusion or psychedelic guitar noodling that drains Unrelapsed’s scant reserves of flow and momentum.

Accordingly, Unrelapsed is a difficult and toilsome listen that drove me to contemplate my exit within ten minutes of pressing play. Although Tommy Concrete’s performances show prowess and the underlying emotion is derived from real-life experience, the frenetic energy of the compositions, coupled with Tommy’s deeply personal themes, creates an overwhelming experience. While the potent one-two punch of Unrelapsed’s themes and its avant-garde assembly should be a strength, they become too overpowering too quickly, leaving me feeling frayed and confused instead of appreciating Tommy’s authenticity and creativity. Tommy’s choice to remain self-produced was also dicey but, ironically, the album’s production may be its saving grace. Yes, the drums are overpowering and everything is way too loud, but the mix is balanced and adds some much-needed depth and complexity to Unrelapsed’s sonic onslaught.

Unrelapsed offers a cathartic exploration of addiction and little else. It’s a chaotic and fragmented frenzy that quickly exhausted me by its lack of cohesion, overwhelming pace, and constant sensory overload. At the same time, however, Unrelapsed mirrors a struggle that many have endured but few can comprehend, and I genuinely hope Tomas found solace in its creation. Perhaps that alone should be deserving of a higher score. But the fact remains that Unrelapsed is plagued by persistent troubles— both old and new— and will only resonate with those who have a high tolerance for disorder and raw emotional expression.

Rating: 1.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Howling Invocations
Websites: tommyconcrete.bandcamp.com | instagram.com/TommyConcrete
Releases Worldwide: November 1, 2024

#10 #2024 #BlackenedHardcore #DevinTownsend #Hardcore #HowlingInvocations #ImperialTriumphant #Nov24 #Review #Reviews #ScottishMetal #TheLocust #TommyConcrete