Release Friday: 10 October 2025

It’s been a while. Life’s been busy. So let’s catch up with the most recent releases because quite a bit has happened release-wise since I last posted here, so I’m working my way through 3-4 weeks of releases here 😀

The German band Neverland in Ashes recently announced a new beginning, which comes with a new name: As VÆNTIS they are now back with their first new single Paradigm. For me it’s as much an earworm as their older songs were and I’m excited for what’s yet to come:

I’m not the biggest listener of The O’Reillys and the Paddyhats, although their musical style is pretty much my taste but somehow they never really caught my attention – unless they come with a feature of a band I like. In this case, Malte Hoyer of Versengold joined them for their song We Paint the Town Green and hearing Malte sing English is always worth a listen:

A release that made me personally insanely happy is WORLDS PULSE by Aviana, which is the final song of their upcoming album VOID (to be released on 31 October) – and it comes with a feature with Eddie Berg of Imminence. I can hardly think of anything better than Eddie Berg and Joel Holmqvist joining forces and I am now even more excited for VOID:

One of my favourite Summer Breeze discoveries this year (although I didn’t see them live, a bit too late for me, but they caught my attention in the Summer Breeze playlist) were Coldrain, who released a new single called FREE FALL last month. It’s an absolute banger with a somewhat uplifting vibe. I love it and I’m looking forward to seeing them live with Revnoir later this year:

Queen Melissa Bonny has released a new solo single together with yu umehara from the Japanese band Devil Within. And it easily gets stuck in your head. The song is called Snake Bite and it comes with both incredible strong clear vocals as well as growls. Honestly, Melissa Bonny is such an incredible singer. Check her out!

My beloved musical anti-depressant Oceans released another new song. Atlas is the third release from their upcoming EP, and in typical Oceans-manner the song deals with the struggles of life. Not gonna lie, recently no band hits as hard as Oceans and I am so incredibly thankful that I discovered them.

Another new release of this week: Annisokay’s new single Splinter is the second out of three new songs that will be added as bonus tracks to a re-release of the Abyss cycle. To be fair: My endless love for bands regularly gets tested when they think it’s a cool idea to re-release already released material with bonus tracks, but that’s worth an entire separate essay. Nevertheless, Splinter is a beautiful, very Annisokay-ish song.

Speaking of queens, the incredible Fabienne Erni has also released another solo song. Stone by Stone is a beautiful, somewhat majestic/epic metal ballad that’s very touching. An incredible woman creating yet another incredible song:

And finally: I guess the release of the next Equilibrium album is not so super far away, as the band shows with another new single that they’ve finally returned from hibernation. I’ll Be Thunder is an incredibly powerful song with bits of epic orchestration and it makes me an even bigger fan of Fabian Getto. With their latest releases, I am more than excited for their next album. Equilibrium show once again that they were born to be epic.

Furthermore, there have been a few album releases. Actually so many that I can’t link all of them here. A friend of mine recommended Esoterica’s new album Ether Metal to me and while I had never heard of them before, I immediately fell in love with this album.

Furthermore, I Prevail finally released their new album Violent Nature and I have mentioned before how „worried“ I was about their first album without Brian Burkheiser, but it’s a good one.

My very beloved Bloodred Hourglass released their new album We Should Be Buried Like This and if I find the time I will write a few words about it here. I was surprised because I’d say it’s a bit less on the Melo-Death side than the album before – but it’s an absolute banger and I love it from beginning to end.

Another Finnish band released a new album in September: Amorphis‚ new album Borderland came out at the end of September and it’s really damn beautiful.

And finally, a highly ranked candidate for my personal album of the year is Death Above Life by Orbit Culture, which is kinda surprising given the fact that I discovered them only recently. But the album is so damn powerful and so damn good that it might even be able to beat Eluveitie’s ANV.