I spent a week and a bit in New Zealand - my first proper “no work and forget what time it is” holiday in over a decade. By Jupiter I needed it. I could feel relaxation take hold. I was also introduced to Speight Mid Ale, Raro, and dip with bits. I am not the same. Here are some discs but:
Machinae Supremacy - Machinae Supremacy
Self-Release (2026)
I think my soul has been crying out for a new Machinae Supremacy album since… 2016??? Jesus wept. For those unacquainted with these melo-power metal-core adjacent Swedes, MS sing songs about gaming for gamers. Not like Frank Klepacki or the Tiberian Sons - covering video game music, though they do that in earnest - but use it as a template for their songwriting, much like Blind Guardian uses fantasy and Tolkien as theirs. Add to that the use of a SIDStation, a MIDI instrument outputting crisp blippy 8-bit arps and noise using the MOS technology SID chip at its core - the sound of the Commodore 64 and really, generation zero of video gamers. Pendulum was the first offering from the album; anthemic and yearning, like an epic anime style offering of undying love, built around complicated arpeggios and downtuned nu-riffs, blindsided by fluid soloing. The message: “Hey, motherfuckers, we’re BACK.”
A SID enters the fray in Sidescroller, a tribute to those very 8-bit and 16-bit games of yore. MS are Swedish, therefore they’re baptised in the songwriting waters of “don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” Poppy, bratty, yet deceptively intricate, there’s nothing on this album that seems rushed or forced to get it out the door. The bulk of MS is built around epic, rousing choruses (Restless and Wicked, Endless, Legends) emulating that rush of capturing a point or defeating a boss after the seventeen-hundredth attempt. Their deft hands conjure straight up thrash (Wounds), ‘core-tinged balladry (Pretty for the Monsters), swashbuckling power metal (FATE of ALL), esoteric Muse-style prog by way of 90s MOD tracker drum & bass (WEAPON of CHOICE), and even pop-punk (Definition [Change the Ending]), and have the epic and the electronic collide into a perfect Psimerion, branching out with an arp leads and pounding drums before launching up into the stratosphere with vaulting vocals that demand repeat listens. These divine elements reach apotheosis on WARRIORS Pts. 1 and 2, a real treat for guitar nerds of all stripes.
Yes - MS are a niche within a niche. Yet, its undeniable their passion matches their considerable talent. If you’re a gamer you’ll get it; if not, there’s still lots that’ll have you inserting your USB into its love.exe.
DAN SWANÖ - Moontower
Century Media Records (1999, re-release 2026)
Ahh, pre-2000s metaldom in Australia. It was Metallica, Slipknot, or NOTHING. No really, ask anyone. If you weren’t old or savvy enough to trade tapes, whatever triple j or Triple MMM foisted on you was your entire rivetheaded identity. Then the MP3 revolution came and went… and we got into stupid shit like DragonForce, I guess. Hell, I ain’t complaining! If there was a spiritual father of the modern Swedish progressive death metal scene, my black smoke vote goes to Dan Swanö. Leader of the brilliant yet ill-fated Edge of Sanity, multi-multi-instrumentalist, and producer of every Swedish death metal album worth a damn (and fuckin Millencolin?) including Opeth’s debut, Morningrise. Going full Todd Rundgren and/or Mike Oldfield on our asses, Moontower is his post-Edge of Sanity love letter to genre - and his only namesake release. We begin with sawtooth synth and growling, the kind Amorphis would relentlessly riff on … seven years later (and haven’t stopped, mind you.)
Patchworks moves on to knotty EoS passages with bolt-on 12-bar death n’ blues with piercing synth over the top, because fuck you that’s why. We’re dragging King Crimson into that 21st Century, man! Uncreation is a portent of Witherscapes to come, while the opening peals of piano on Add Reality feels like a puree of all those aforementioned 70s progsters, drizzled over a bowl of brain salad surgery. As a Swedish prog artyfact, Creating Illusions sounds like Opeth stole this track’s big riffs and bigger organ walls, carving a career out of it (until Watershed, of course.) Seriously - send it to any Opeth fan and see if they notice it isn’t them. (Likewise the jazz-fusionist Encounterparts.) It’s a disc that lends itself to historical examination - perhaps one of those albums so many Swedes listened to, forming their mindsets and their bands in kind. Dan “The Man” is a legend for a reason, and this disc is proof.
Abigail Williams - A Void Within Existence
Agonia Records (2025)
Olympia, WA’s Abigail Williams have come a long way from worshipping at the feet of Emperor at the turn of the century. Thick and mired in low-end, Life, Disconnected lumbers through with dissonance and woe, before guitars throb red and the band chants in unison about something unspeakably grim. Though their black metal roots are planted in the firmament of this platter, apocalypse streaks through the heart of it, not unlike Warcrab, Ulcerate, or Devenial Verdict.
The real treat is monolith of sound Talk To Your Sleep, melding crushing, merciless riffs with classic Tom G. Warrior style pomp and pageantry. They take a break from grinding us down on introverted closer No Less Than Death, clean vocals casting a doom-ish pall on affairs, inching them closer to Primordial or Novembers Doom instead of constant boots to the face (which is a very good thing.) I can’t tell you how many times I’ve played this over other discs in the six stacker - it’s a mid-2020s essential.
Archspire - Too Fast To Die
Self-Release (2026)
Archspire is NOT to death metal as DragonForce is to power metal. When DragonForce hit in ‘03, the whole “we play faster, wank harder, nutcrunch higher” gimmick was well and truly played out by the release of their third album in three years, Inhuman Rampage. They’ve released six (what?) since those halcyon “Through The Fire and FLAMEEEEES” Guitar Hero 100% flash in the pan days and near no one has given a shit. Archspire, believe it or not, get better with age. Pushing blastbeats into near indistinguishable blurs and possessing technical prowess that’ll have Christian Münzner (Obscura) craving vengeance, Archspire sew together syllable-spitting gutturals and seven-dimensional fret runs like it ain’t no thang. A swarm of slam will slap past you like a treadmill of riffs until it screeches to a halt, introducing a lone lick as the motif for the next round of ass-kicking (Red Goliath.) They look nine out of ten djentists in the eye and tell them to get fucked (Carrion Ladder) and break in new drummer Spencer Moore (ex-Inferi) in their spun up dynamo title track. How very dare they be this good for this long.
At The Gates - The Ghost of a Future Dead
Century Media (2026)
How bitter sweet this disc is, swinging it open and finding the image of the dearly departed Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg on the inner cover. He passed after he’d recorded sessions due to cancer and the record was finished according to his wishes. It sounds trite at this point, but it’s a culmination of all the eras of these Gothenburg stalwarts - their depraved death n’ roll beginnings (A Ritual of Waste, In Dark Distortion), a budding romance between melody and pointed brutality (The Fever Mask), and their hardcore-thrash-crossover-whatever golden era full of tumbling, rollicking riffs (Of Interstellar Death.) Funnily enough, they take on sounds from fellow scenesters In Flames (Parasitical Hive could’ve fit Whoracle) and Dark Tranquillity (The Unfathomable might’ve squeaked in during their Gallery/The Mind’s I era.) The reunion of Brothers Bjorler delivers tracks trimmed to tight, urgent, and bloodthirsty order - no saxophone dalliances or exhaustive self-indulgences. it’s a fine swansong for a band - a such a seminal one at that. You couldn’t really ask for anything greater. Rest in Power, Tompa.
Sindar - Tower of the Sun
Self-Release (2025)
These Tolkien ringbearers come out swinging with knotty, intricate riffs and guttural bellows that sound quite similar (don’t say it again for fucks sake) to Opeth. That said, cribbing Opeth is no easy feat. The inevitable question is, what kind of Opeth? I have to say, well, all kinds (see also: Anor [Tower of the Sun].) These guys don’t do it forever, as Black Moth treads a fine line between Euro-folk silliness and ironic shoegaze melody. Harmonies abound, snowcapped mountains scale by, Hobbits march on to Mount Doom. Greenfields is all strummed acoustics and twinkling pianos, a 70s prog throwback that isn’t cliché piled on top of cliché. The Ranger and centrepiece Greek chorus style narrative could’ve thrown Melinda out of the moor on Still Life, much of it stripped bare of electrics, left to meander thickets of solo piano. Compare it to the e-bow suffused Field of the Dead, also distinctively cinematic, before closing with an epic yet technical Inheritance. Did I mention Dan “The Man” Swanö mixed this? No? Well - that’s the funny thing. I’d get this disc confused with Moontower more often than not. High praise, I’d think.