Blackened deathcore has truly run its course. This is simultaneously a hopeful sentiment, as it may encourage bands to explore new ideas, but also a sad one, because so few bands have actually created music that resembles the genre’s namesake. For every A Wake in Providence, there are twenty more bands flailing around with crappy production, boring synths, and chugga-wugga breakdowns that induce eye-rolls every time. Vegas-based Ov Sulfur sits somewhere between the two on their sophomore release, Endless. Featuring genuinely blackened elements in their sound, the band puts greater focus on melody and clean singing, bringing them much closer to… dare I say, blackened metalcore? If that genre makes you wretch on sight, fair. For the curious, I would say you will be rewarded, but approach with caution. Everybody else, go read a different review.

On Endless, Ov Sulfur refines the sound from their debut, which I genuinely could not stand (No offense, Thus Spoke). It says a lot that I found myself frequently enjoying the band’s take on blackened deathcore. Songs are generally tight, if formulaic, but they focus much more on riffs, and there is a surprising amount of blackened death metal in there. “Seed” features legit black metal riffing that leads into chainsaw-worship blackened death tremolo alongside brutal double-bass kicks. These elements are a mainstay across the album, which kept me going throughout Endless. Before you get too excited, the chorus comes in strong on “Seed,” and while Ricky Hoover’s cleans are perfectly servicable, this is just the tip of the iceberg on Endless. Tracks like “Seed,” “Forlorn,” and “Vast Eternal” are solid, but they all follow a tired formula. The backing riff on the chorus of “Seed” and “Forlorn” sounds almost identical, and every song is brought to a standstill by downright sleepy breakdowns. Even the album intro track is the comically overused “here is a breakdown, but it keeps getting slower,” that feels like a staple on every deathcore release these days.

Endless (24-bit HD audio) by Ov Sulfur

Endless isn’t without its redeeming qualities. Ricky Hoover’s vocals are genuinely great across the album. His cleans are surprisingly decent, even if a little “butt-rock” in his own words. His harsh vocals are clear and well-enunciated, making for surprisingly catchy moments even at the heaviest of times. “Vast Eternal” shows his speed, and his highs are crisp, avoiding the screeching heights that are devoid of technique. This is clearly a veteran vocalist doing his thing. The rest of the band keeps pace, and even more surprisingly for a deathcore band, there are tons of riffs on Endless. “Forlorn” starts with a sweeping, tapping intro and goes right into a groovy, blackened death slammer. Guitarists Chase Wilson and Christian Becker put the work in, and the album is filled with a delightful amount of axe heroics. There are even honest-to-goodness solos on this thing. The drums are a highlight too, and the album is full of double-bass brutality. Leviathvn (ooft) goes wild on the kit, and this band has no lack of passion, as mentioned in our previous review.

Time for the corpse-paint-wearing elephant in the room. Endless features, not one, but two ballads. First, halfway through the album with “Wither” and then the final track “Endless//Loveless”. The former is a heartfelt dirge for Hoover’s lost grandparents, with an adorable intro and outro soundbite from them that genuinely elevates the track. The track is a solid, if uninspired ballad that features decent cleans from Hoover and bassist Josh Bearden that may genuinely induce tears for those with close relations to lost loved ones. “Endless//Loveless” is the opposite. A hangnail of a track that didn’t even need to end up on the album, killing the finale after a string of Endless’ best tracks (”Bleak,” “Dread,” and “A World Away”) and featuring some truly cliché lyrics like “loving you is like holding onto water.” Lastly, the production is crushed which is disappointing coming from a major lablel. Synths drown out riffs frequently, and at this point, it seems to be a genre standard.

With Ov Sulfur’s sophomore album, they come back tighter, more focused, and better for it. Despite this, no amount of struggling will free them of the mire that is blackened deathcore. The strict adherence to genre trappings hangs like an albatross around the neck of a band that clearly wants to be making more emotionally driven, melodic music. With Endless, you get a refined, tightly played record that exemplifies the better parts of the genre, but it is so worn out that you may find yourself moving on before you get past the tired, cliche intro. Ov Sulfur have crafted an infinitely better album in Endless, but it is made for the adherents of the genre, and little else.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 4 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Century Media
Websites: facebook.com/ovsulfur | instagram.com/ovsulfur
Releases Worldwide: January 16th, 2026

#nowPlaying 🔥 🔥 🔥

Ov Sulfur - Endless (24-bit HD audio)

https://ovsulfur.bandcamp.com/album/endless-24-bit-hd-audio

#blackMetal #blackenedDeathcore #carcosa #deathMetal #deathcore #ingested #metal #metalcore #distant #lasVegas

Grimnis – The Path ov the Flame Review

By Alekhines Gun

The great Gardenstale may be on a bit of a hiatus, but his mission for 2025 remains ingrained: give more attention to bands brave enough to hit us up directly. No label interference, no wanky paragraphs of how life-changing an album is, just a collection of fellows submitting themselves to our lashings. Imagine my surprise to see in our contact forms some honest-to-goodness Germanic deathcore, and a fresh debut at that! Deathcore proper is received questionably around these parts, with fellows Iceberg and Dear Hollow as its more staunch defenders. Still, Grimnis was brave enough to reach out directly, so let’s reward their optimism and subject their own release to our blackened flames.

The Path ov the Flame laces symphonic coating and blackened touches into a real sloberknocker of an artistic presentation. Wisely sidestepping an overreliance on tension-release breakdowns of olde, Grimnis work some well-trodden ingredients in shrieks and blast beats with real melodic touch into an album which is carefully constructed for maximum impact with little drag or dredge to be found. From the goth-tinged waltz signatures rooting “Sigil” and “The Brightest Star” to the beautiful outro of “The Obsidian Ceremony”, The Path ov the Flame is melodic with a capital M, coating the album in earworm-infested beauties without sacrificing the heaviness the genre calls for.

This accomplishment is rooted in two key ingredients. The first is excellence in the implementation of the orchestral flair. While some bands use such touches to disguise the complete lack of actual chord progressions and leads, Grimnis have meshed “less is more” into bombastic, theatrical results. “Sigil” shows the album’s entire hand, coming out with a cursed baroque-ian dance which is supported by the strings but never at the usurpation of the guitars. Harpsichord, piano, violin, cello, choir, synth, and a few vaguely eastern instruments I couldn’t precisely identify are worked as an extra tool of composition throughout the release, adding climactic eruptions to the conclusion of “The Brightest Star”, as well as innumerable calmer passages bridging one slab of intensity after another. Guitarists Chris and Jan deftly wrap leads and chord progressions in and under these flourishes, alternating between tremolo leads to match and bolster the melodies and other times trimming down to minimalistic counterpoint to give way to the grand display.

The second key tool is a grasp of compositional limitation beyond Grimnis’s years. While breakdowns and (unfortunate) pig squeals and blast beats abound, not a single moment drags beyond its expiration date or is repeated more than is called for. Chris is a talented vocalist with a great deal of various techniques on display, though he too falls prey to the “drench everything in voice” trend that so plagues the genre. “Hellborn Herald” interrupts what sounds like a peaceful outro for an outta-nowhere slam rendered powerful by contrast without beating it into the ground as if overly proud of its own heaviness. Breakdowns come and go in appropriate measure, with drummer Ju oscillating between eighth and sixteenth notes in creative application, rendering even stereotypical moments engaging. Occasional motifs are repeated as bookends or choruses, but as a whole, nothing outstays its welcome, and the listener is ushered from moment to moment through aural threads in a carefully constructed tapestry rather than chucked from one disconnected “brutz” moment to the next. Even the track sequencing is carefully placed, ensuring songs that end heavily are followed up by moody intros and vice versa, preventing cuts from blurring together throughout the album’s near fifty-minute run time.

I had next to no expectations when I pulled The Path ov the Flame from the promo slump. Even I had, they would have been exceeded and blown to smithereens as soon as we got past the usual boring intro track. Grimnis have come out swinging with what I am forced to call a truly remarkable debut. With an excellent grasp of melody and a sense of compositional restraint not found in bands many times their age in both years and discography, the lads from Germany have thrown down the gauntlet for symphonic deathcore with enviable ease and noteworthy style. It’s exciting to know this is their first offering, and I’m very keen to see where the future takes this promising young outfit. For now, deathcore or no, I can only give it a resounding seal of approval. The Path ov the Flame isn’t merely an enjoyable album, but an easy contender for deathcore debut of the year.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: n/a | Format Reviewed: Fookin’ Stream
Label: Independent Release
Website: Official Website
Releases Worldwide: August 9th, 2025

#2025 #35 #Aug25 #BlackenedDeathcore #GermanDeathcore #Grimnis #IndependentRelease #Review #Reviews #SymphonicDeathcore #ThePathOvTheFlame

Recorruptor – Sorrow Will Drown Us All Review

By Alekhines Gun

One of the most entertaining things about describing death metal in any of its iterations is the limitless well of hyperbolic descriptors one can conjure. Older monikers like “crushes,” “brutalizes,” and “heavy” have given way to fun artistic notions like “being attacked by killer bees,” “gored by rabid rhinos,”1 and “being mated with by a coked out giraffe.” My own newest favorite phrase came by way of one of our loyal commentariat in the phrase “Taint kicker”. Michigan locals Recorruptor have arrived with their third LP, Sorrow Will Drown Us All, and it seeks to continue to force the listener to dig deeper into their well of artistic metaphors to describe the raw carnage on display. Are you up for a swim?

Like frosting with copious sprinkles on an extra chunky cake, Recorruptor use a hodgepodge of ingredients traversing from blackened deathcore to death metal and slam proper. This results in an album that is chuggy, blasty, slammy, and wammy, without easily being pigeonholed into any particular subgenre. A Venn diagram of sound neatly intersecting between Aborted, Cognitive, Cattle Decapitation and Lorna Shore, Sorrow Will Drown Us All flings the listener from one prolonged-shriek-laden chugging presentation with lightly strummed atmospheric lines (“Bearing the Befouled Spawn”) to vaguely OSDM melodic theatrics (“An Unnatural Lust”) without missing a beat or any part sounding out of place. The cohesiveness of songwriting is reflected in how each part is carefully composed for maximum impact without sounding like an unfocused collection of disparaging riffs. Recorruptor have opted for violence on a cinematic scale using a Batman-sized utility belt of tools to get their themes across, and those themes come in abundance.

This diversity of stylings means standout moments will depend entirely on what ingredient you’re most into. “Urn of Verglas” offers up a jumbo-sized plate of green eggs and slam, which is gleefully Ingested in its blunt simplicity, but rendered extra septic by contrast of the ruthless speed of what came before it. “Envenoming” is straight Cattle Decapitation worship with its atmospherics-rooted sense of grind and vocalist Clint Franklin doing a great impression of Travis Ryan at his most esophagus-abusing.2 “Insidious Rot” starts out with modern death metal groove before devolving into a prolonged breakdown set well beyond two-stepping pace and spotlighting some thunky chunky bass from Alex Schmidt. Guitarists Seth Earl and Isaac Marier slather the entire release in solos, which never lose their sense of tension and release to guitar hero wankery.

Where Sorrow Will Drown Us All fails is in the same way cakes can be too rich—too much of a good thing is real, and food is not the only victim. While every song is killer, they’re also long in the tooth and produced more abrasively than the DR would suggest. Vocals also follow the maddening modern trend of bathing the music almost nonstop rather than letting it breathe.3 There’s no denying the technical prowess and kaleidoscopic nature of the performances on display, but the album is so crammed with ideas that it feels much lengthier than its not unreasonable 48-minute runtime, and the two symphonic cuts do little to break up the whole into more palatable chunks. The name of the game for Recorruptor is going to be self-editing. If they can trim down the bulk of their ideas to more immediate offerings, they’ll be ready to blast and brawl their way to the top of the blackened deathcore heap without setting off genre purists in the process.

Sorrow Will Drown Us All is a caliber album, and if you’re a sucker for any of the various bands listed, you’ll find much to love here. There is sonic succulence reminiscent of meat grinders, bulldozers, horny wild animals, and yes, even taint kicking. Nevertheless, the final product topples under its own weight from the sheer glut of ideas on display. Quality ideas though they be, the album is so full of them that they end up fighting for the listener’s attention after the album has long ceased to play. I’m rooting for Recorruptor to hone in on their skillset and opt for a less-is-more approach. For now, grab a fork and let the sorrow get you into a diabetic coma.

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 256 kbps mp3
Label: Time to Kill Records
Websites: Album Bandcamp | Official Facebook Page
Releases Worldwide: July 18th, 2025

#2025 #30 #Aborted #AmericanMetal #BlackenedDeathcore #CattleDecapitation #Cognitive #DeathMetal #Ingested #Jul25 #LornaShore #Recorruptor #Review #Reviews #SorrowWillDrownUsAll

Nothing like throwing on a #blackenedDeathcore playlist to lay back and think.

band examples, in no particular order:
GODEATERTX
Divisive
The Hate Project

Grasping at the Shadow
Against the Tyrants
Ruins of Perception

Xenotheory
The Archaic Epidemic
The Raven Autarchy

Lilith's Demise
Molotov Solution
The Behest of Serpents
Monument Of Misanthropy

It's all heavy and introcate with great riffs & breakdowns. There's some atmosphere with synths sneaking in. Fast, #brutal

#deathMetal #hardcore #deathcore #progressiveMetal

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#MetalSucks
Ov Sulfur Release New Single “Seed” as Their Tour with Nekrogoblikon Kicks Off
They're heading out on tour starting tonight. Ov Sulfur Release New Single “Seed” as Their Tour with Nekrogoblikon Kicks Off .

https://www.metalsucks.net/2025/06/04/ov-sulfur-release-new-single-seed-as-their-tour-with-nekrogoblikon-kicks-off/

#OvSulfur #Seed #Nekrogoblikon #Tour #MetalSucks #BlackenedDeathcore #Exmortus #Revocation #Brat