The Doorway may be a hard listen for some but for others this is a glimpse into as perfect as savage audial terror can get.

This EP will satiate fans until a new album comes and likely gives die-hard supporters a glimpse into Mayhem breaking the barriers of what they are perceived to be and taking a dive into what inspired much of their early output.

The three tracks on offer here ride the darkness of misery with a meditative calmness, injecting sincere and stunning beauty into the blackest of sound and emotion.

The entire album floats blissfully through weightless ease and gleaming audial brightness as each song captures another strikingly beautiful glare from this multifaceted diamond.

Interpolant take technical death metal and aspects of djent into a dystopian twilight of glowing synthesiser-driven metal, with these elements especially coming to the forefront of sound.

Alder Glade can rip and tear with blistering, raw extremity such as the distorted fuzz of very old-school black metal meeting crushing blasts as well enchant with glimmers of post-black beauty and synthy soundscapes.

It’s deep… abyss-deep, filled with guttural guitar punches and serpentine riffs, ghastly gollum-esque vocals and cavernous ambience all packed into a suffocating and claustrophobic package.

Decoherence are crushingly heavy and aurally devastating with a sound that writhes somewhere amongst the talent of Ulcerate, Blut Aus Nord, Darkspace and shades of Aborym’s industrial edge.

It’s an album that makes you breathe in darkness and exhale only light. Empire of Love is thoroughly wanted, needed and completely integral to all of black metal and to further push the understanding that in metal everyone is accepted under one banner, maybe one day the world will join in with that thought too.

Paradeigma (Phosphenes of Aphotic Eternity) is a single monstrous and mesmeric cacophony of darkness and light, of punishing, spiteful riffs and bleak, dreaded ambience that, for full effect, should be heard in one sitting.

This is an unconventional take on death metal savagery, filled with intricate details and as a whole is a barbaric and untethered beast with a clear and distinctive sound.

Burden Limbs have the confidence and talent to know exactly where they are in their career process and where they want to be.

It’s incredibly nuanced, sometimes strange and certainly unorthodox and perhaps bordering on the exotic at times… all reasons to thoroughly praise this release.

Mare Cognitum is stunning cosmic metal with the ethereal tinge of blackgaze. This is black-veiled mastery ablaze with all the transcendent radiance of an exploding star. Solar Paroxysm is a ferociously beautiful release from a man whose star shows no sign of burning out.

Autarkh is Dodecahedron sent through the matrix at warp speed and splintered with fragments of futuristic audial violence.

Forhist is a dark walk deep into the savage woods of traditional 90s Nordic-style metal, filled with lightning blastbeats, razor-sharp guitar hooks, 90s synths and memorable tracks.

An album that absorbs you into its mechanised womb and keeps you safe in its blissfully disconcerting view of harrowing noise and devastatingly bruising music, wrapping you in a comforting embrace of everything you love about this band.

Mossweaver will be the beautifully hand-crafted survival tool for any nature-loving metaller.

The juggernaut vocals, powerful drums and frenetic stringwork all come together in one glorious way to create a cold, calculated atmosphere rich with head-banging ferocity and pensive moments to get lost in.

Over three tracks Aberration convey a palpable hellscape of vivid crawling terror and show a vast imagination in their nuanced songwriting, perfect for any metal head to dream darkly in under their audial blanket of unseen nightmares.

It is abject terror driven into your soul with every harsh tremolo, every blast beating onslaught and every insidious fear-building atmosphere.