Swedish heavy rockers Graveyard have announced their seventh studio album, Fever, arriving in October.

Details: https://metalinsider.net/releases/graveyard-reveal-new-album-fever

#Graveyard #Fever #NuclearBlastRecords #NewMusic

Back in 2015, an unknown band from Denver called Khemmis came out of nowhere and clobbered me with their massive Absolution debut. It was a shrewd and crafty mixture of classic doom, stoner, and sludge idioms, and I ate it up greedily. They came back the following year with an even bigger, better opus called Hunted, and it looked to all the world as if Khemmis would be joining acts like Pallbearer and Crypt Sermon as the vanguard of an American doom revival. 2018s Desolation saw the band inject loads of epic and trve metal into the sound, and it worked, but felt less stellar overall. 2021s Deceiver pushed this concept even further, loading down their long compositions with 80s metal influences, losing more of the doom cred they’d developed over their crucial early releases. It felt as if Khemmis were drifting away from what made them so thrilling, much as Pallbearer did, and they too would end up lost at sea if things continued this way. With this negative trending in mind, I approached their eponymously titled fifth album with a gnawing sense of dread. Would this signify surrender to the forces of diminishing recordings, or would they make a push to reclaim the lofty heights of Absolution and Hunted? With teeth clenched, I pressed play and prayed for Mojo.

It turns out, Khemmis is a partial return to what we heard on Desolation, but with some crucial differences. Firstly, the songs are all much shorter and tighter, with only one cracking the 6-minute mark. Secondly, their blending of classic and epic doom with trve and traditional heavy metal and blackened influences feels more carefully thought out, and it flows better than it did on Deceiver. The songsmithing is also vastly superior this time. Most importantly, they haven’t lost sight of the fact that they’re a doom band at heart, despite this being a more “accessible” sound for them. Opener “Invocation of the Dreamer” runs from black metal aggression into classic heavy metal and onward into doom without becoming disorienting. It’s an engaging, entertaining song from start to finish, and it will remind you of roughly 20 other acts as it shifts tempos and genres in smart, interesting ways. There are even hints of Archspire in some of the neo-classic guitar noodling. “Corpsebloom Garden” is a dead ringer for Crypt Sermon, and it works as an epic doom sonnet despite the occasional death vocals, which add a nice edge to the otherwise forlorn clean singing. “Grief’s Reverie” keeps the epic doom coming with an uptick of trve badassery, and the death vox shares space with a kind of radio-ready vocal style from Phil that’s unexpected but cool.

The best stuff comes later on, with my personal favorite being “Beneath the Scythe.” This is doom for those who want the classic style married to the trve in never-ending holy headlock. It adroitly conjoins classic doom and heavy metal with just enough chest-thumping badassery to win me over. It’s a legitimately great song and one of the band’s best. “Carrion King” starts with scathing, blasting black metal before settling down into a sort of mellow doom with upbeat clean vocals, only to mutate into absolutely crushing death-doom. There are some harsh, gruesome moments here that reek of Triptykon, re-establishing the band’s doom bona vides. Closer “Benediction Tones” is classic doom with moments of upbeat, poppy vocals that could be on a YES album, and it shouldn’t work, but it definitely does. At a trim, muscular 42 minutes, Khemmis glides by effortlessly and demands replays.

As ever, the Khemmis formula depends on Ben Hutcherson and Phil Pendergast successfully beguiling us with killer riffs and memorable vocal exchanges. Phil improves as a singer with every release, and some of his most gripping, poignant moments occur here. He drifts from wounded sadboi to burly trve metal and hits into AOR at key moments, all effectively rendered. Ben provides nasty death roars and guttural spewings and plays the rampaging beast to Phil’s morose beauty. Guitar-wise, they deliver a lot of killer moments too, with somber, melancholic leads and harmonies rubbing against blackened mania and death-doom when they aren’t engaged in 80s metal gallops and NWoBHM noodling. It’s a heady mix, and it all hangs together because the writing is sound and focused.

While Khemmis doesn’t bring the band back to the glory days of Hunted, it does find them righting the ship and sailing in the right direction. In fact, the album glides right between the Very Good and the Great with no song feeling like a letdown. I’m very relieved to see Khemmis back in the black with a release I enjoy from start to finish, and this will be getting mucho airtime over the next few months. Mojo listens to his faithful apes!

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast
Websites: khemmis.bandcamp.com | khemmisdoom.com | facebook.com/khemmisdoom | instagram.com/khemmisdoom
Releases Worldwide: June 12th, 2026

Lavender Larcenist

Over a decade ago, I made a concerted effort to get into doom metal. Like many of my fellow writers, sitting down to delve into new genres or artists is a favorite pastime. So, I bought myself a copy of Decibel Magazine’s special edition issue that focused on their top 100 doom metal albums and dove right in. Needless to say, I fell in love, and one of my favorites to this day is Khemmis. The band’s brand of doom was immediately captivating, with Phil Pendergast’s echoing, enveloping vocals and sword-and-sorcery-as-metaphor lyrics. They remain a staple in my household to this day, and their 2016 magnum opus Hunted is one of my all-time favorite records. Now they are back after a five-year gap with their eponymous album, Khemmis. Typically, a self-titled release signals a change in direction or the solidification of a trademark sound, but is this record a new lease on life for Khemmis or a creative stumble for an incredibly consistent doom metal staple?

Contrary to our Simian Sovereign (lashings forthcoming for this difference in opinion), I found Deciever to be one of Khemmis’ best records, and their trademark sound was still as affecting and pervasive as ever. The last thing I expected was a reevaluation of their endeavors, but as an artist myself, the war against creative stagnation never ends. I fully understand why the band would want to branch out, and while Khemmis isn’t a sea change in the way some acts completely reinvent themselves, it feels markedly different than anything they have previously done. The doom is toned down significantly, and the heavy metal is dialed up, while a not-insignificant number of death and borderline power metal influences have seeped in. Big choruses anchor each, while the roaming guitars and drawn-out tones of previous records are all but missing. There are no thirteen-minute epics, and the majority of the tracks follow the lines of songs that were previously one-off pace-breakers, such as the indomitable “Three Gates” or the bouncing “Isolation”.

Khemmis is straightforward as far as the band’s previous records go. The album bleeds together on the first few listens, and songs tend to follow the same flow and general pacing. It falls into the trap of being stuffed with mid-paced rockers, making it hard to differentiate between listens without really digging in. While not immediately grabbing, Khemmis begins to show its strengths with repeated spins. Tracks may all be mid-paced and conceptually repetitive, but every one is incredibly solid to downright great. Only one chorus stuck out to me as grating; “Gilded Chambers” is an all-around solid song with a ripping opening riff and great melodies, but the chorus reminds me of power metal or even something like Boston, ripped straight from the annals of classic rock. Ultimately, it is campy, and the backing harmonic vocals send it into the stratosphere of cheese. The track isn’t bad, but just not to my taste, especially for Khemmis.

Longtime fans like myself may be left wanting for the doom epics of olde, but there is no shortage of great music on this record. Outside of the album’s repetitive pacing and some odd stylistic choices, there is very little to complain about. “Invocation of the Dreamer” is classic Khemmis and an immediately gripping song that features incredible work on the low end instrumentally and vocally from Ben Hutcherson. Production throughout is solid if a little safe; everything has its place, and the bass is a highlight, but there is little range from song to song. For a self-titled record, I was hoping for more creativity and bombast from a band that has so many great records under its belt. Khemmis, like the production, is very safe. While not breaking the mold, it does stand as a testament to the band’s ability to write catchy, melodic death doom. “Grief’s Reverie,” “Beneath the Scythe,” and album closer “Benediction Tones” are highlights outside of the aformented opening track.

While Khemmis slightly disappointed me as a superfan, I was able to move beyond what I wanted from the record and fully appreciate its more focused approach. Khemmis doesn’t reach the heights of previous releases, but it is still a very solid album that straddles the line between heavy metal and death doom, making for a listen that is immediately more approachable than their previous records but less rewarding as a result. It seems like Khemmis wants to move away from their traditional doom metal trappings and lean into more arena-driven, heavy metal tracks, and for a band with their talent, the sky is the limit.

Rating: Very Good

Last month, #thenarratorhc #thenarrator unleashed Phosphor, and now they're tearing through the summer festival circuit. 🤘

Where will you be catching them live this year?

📷 I'll be photographing them at #IntoTheGraveFestival next week, and I'm hyped!

🔥 Check out Phosphor:
https://thenarrator.bfan.link/phosphor

💿 #nuclearblastrecords
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📷 Photos by: T. v/d Sluijs
👕 Shirt: Oktober Promotion

At their best, Dimmu Borgir exudes a wicked majesty, governing the forces of darkness with dispassionate contempt and an utter certainty in their ungodly mandate. This attitude, along with the confluence of grandeur and melodrama, defines what initially drew me to Dimmu Borgir years ago, and what has kept me interested despite the interminable gaps between releases. Since forming in 1993, Shagrath and Silenoz have consistently delivered symphonic black metal that tempers the unrelenting acrimony of second-wave black metal with wistful melodies, sculpting an extensive emotional palette. In 2000, Dimmu Borgir enlisted Old Man’s Child’s Galder as lead guitarist, and the three of them penned bewitching black metal for a quarter century. As with all good things, though, it didn’t last, and Galder departed in 2024 to focus on Old Man’s Child once more. Given the shakeup of a longtime winning formula, do Shagrath and Silenoz silence naysayers with Grand Serpent Rising, or are listeners saddled with Temu Borgir?1

As ever, Dimmu Borgir discharges extravagant theater through the lens of black metal, drenching Grand Serpent Rising in haunting atmospherics and lush orchestrations. Since Death Cult Armageddon, the incorporation of symphonic elements has steadily grown more prominent, and over the years, these Norwegians have carved out a niche that exists somewhere between Gorgoroth and Nightwish. And like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir goes for baroque, though instead of luxuriating in garish excess, they compose with nuanced sophistication. Grand Serpent Rising is the culmination of the intervening albums, with Galder’s departure pushing Dimmu Borgir to fill the void he left with more deliberate arrangements. Thankfully, Grand Serpent Rising advances what yielded success for the band over the last couple decades, dredging textural depths and honing the intricate interplays of instrumentation that didn’t reach quite far enough on Eonian.

Though Shagrath and Silenoz shoulder many of Grand Serpent Rising’s performances, a handful of guests play pivotal roles in defining one of Dimmu Borgir’s best-sounding records. Longtime session and live drummer Daray gets an immediate boost, where the drumheads’ natural timbres and resonances leap out of the mix to imbue a thunderous dimension missing from Eonian (“The Qryptfarer,” “Phantom of the Nemesis”). The orchestrations and keyboards also integrate better on Grand Serpent Rising,2 their presence is more intentional and interwoven in lieu of Galder’s nimble lead work. None of this should suggest that the guitars take a backseat, though, as Silenoz and Kjell ‘Damage’ Karlsen (Chrome Division)3 pluck and shred with conviction as songs demand (check the intro to “Repository of Divine Transmutation” and the solo in “Ascent”). The riffs and leads merit attention as well, with soaring melodies (“Slik Minnes en Alkymist”), crystalline cleans (“As Seen in the Unseen”), and trem-picked offensives emboldening the Serpent. All the while, Shagrath croaks (“Slik Minnes en Alkymist”) and croons (“Ascent”), supplying one of black metal’s least abrasive vocal styles.

Dimmu Borgir prevails throughout Grand Serpent Rising, although a few issues from previous albums linger. At sixty-nine minutes long, Grand Serpent Rising sprawls. To be fair, the album is dynamic and intricate enough that parts rarely (if ever) feel repetitive, and proceedings slither quicker than the length suggests. Yet condensing the runtime by ten minutes would improve the overarching impact and effectiveness. Compounding and confounding the duration is the complexity of Grand Serpent Rising’s arrangements—they richly reward those with the patience to fully engage for multiple listens, but present a hurdle for impatient or distracted listening. Still, while the album isn’t perfect, these complaints pale in comparison to the triumph Dimmu Burger devises on Grand Serpent Rising.

In the end, Dimmu Borgir has written an album that refines their sound rather than reinventing it. If you’ve listened to any of their recent albums and formed an opinion, Grand Serpent Rising won’t change it. Instead, it proves that Dimmu remains as skilled as ever at creating opulent symphoblack, regardless of how long it takes between albums or what crucial personnel changes they endure. Dimmu Borgir perseveres For all tid, and if you’re not wholly opposed to flamboyant black metal on principle, their latest awaits to stimulate, captivate, and ensure your Grand Serpent’s Rising.

Rating: Very Good!
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Websites: Website | Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: May 22nd, 2026

2 days since #Narrator dropped Phosphor 🔥
What’s your favorite track so far? 👀💿

💪 https://thenarrator.bfan.link/phosphor
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📷 Photos by: Rémi Liekens

*ad Happy release day to #thenarrator 🖤
“Phosphor” is finally out, and I’m beyond hyped to catch them live at #intothegrave #festival this summer.
Go spin "Phosphor" and support the release via #nuclearblastrecords 💿

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