Overt Enemy – Insurrection (2025) – Review

Overt Enemy - Insurrection - Album Cover

There’s some headscratching going on over at the Review Desk. The powers that be of the metal interweb threw American thrashers Overt Enemy into our lap, wordily touting its wares in often flowery language. An act from Mission, Texas,1 who had – and I quote “…carved a name for itself in the global metal scene…” happily riding into the sunset on all that newfound global fame. Or something.

And that sounds great, except that their 2025 tour happens all around the Lone Star State. And the only live location abroad that we could find was the UK. Back in

[...] Click to raid more!

Vintersorg – Vattenkrafternas Spel (2025) – Review

Vintersorg - Vattenkrafternas Spel - Album Cover

I reckon we’ll need a lamestream n00b list for 2025 as well. Vintersorg, the band around one Andreas Hedlund, has been active since 1996. That’s not quite a lifetime ago, unlike other bands out there. But it is a whopping three decades of faithful service to further the mighty metal lore. And they had an undeniable influence on Northern atmospherics in metal, no contest.

The band sometimes showed its colors at the RMR office tower, straight out of the Northern lights at the outer edges of our aural range. But they never quite made it onto the review … [...] Click to raid more!

Panopticon – Laurentian Blue (2025) – Review

Panopticon - Laurentian Blue - Album Cover

There’s a fine line between Black Metal and proper folk. Examples abound, but the most telling one probably is Wardruna with its founding member Kvitrafn1 (White Raven), who famously hopped to the other side from Gorgoroth together with the infamous Gaahl. The latter returned to his roots in the meantime, whereas Selvik and his sidekick, Lindy-Fay Hella, stayed in pagan land.

But I digress. Panopticon just hit our review pipe. A band steeped in blackened forgery but freely dispensing folksy tunes, too. A one-man show run by one Austin L. Lunn, excelling in a steady flow of Folk and … [...] Click to raid more!