Quick-fire Roundup - February 2026
Short reviews for some of our favorite releases of the past month.
Quick-fire Roundup is our chance to highlight a few of the albums we’ve been digging from the past month that we may not have had the time or energy to pump out full essays for. These releases nevertheless deserve a gold star and a spot on the podium.
PONY - Clearly Cursed
30:45 // February 13th, 2026 // Take This To Heart
After three albums, I think I am allowed to make The Joke: PONY are a bit of a one trick pony. However, they sure keep getting better at that one trick: Clearly Cursed is easily the best batch of sugary grunge-pop songs the Canadians have released so far. There’s still the occasional misstep - “Brilliant Blue” is a little too diabetes-inducing for its own good - but most of this deliciously formulaic record puts forth enough sparkly catchy choruses to warrant its thirty-minute runtime. Clearly Cursed is a carefree summer album released in February, but I’m sure that the explosive hooks in “Freezer” and nostalgic excellence of “Blame Me” will manage to work their way into several playlists as the sun comes out of hiding in a few months. (7.0/10)
- jesper
Mandy, Indiana - URGH
34:34 // February 6th, 2026 // Sacred Bones
There comes a time when all I ask of music is garbled electronic smashing that I can feel generically, unreservedly angry to, and Mandy, Indiana are on now. Rage doesn’t have to be hyperbolic, toxic, male-coded, or even necessarily coherent, and sometimes a cathartic burst of wilful frustration does just the trick: whatever vocalist Valentine Caulfield is blurting in French over the garbled soundbytes and popcorn rhythms of “try saying”, the track’s flailing mesh of contours will scratch you in places you did not know could itch. If, however you do like your vents to come with frighteningly coherent jabs at toxic, male-coded realities, then the final track “I’ll Ask Her” has you covered with its excorciating portrait of victim-blaming, rape-apologising pieces of excrement; it makes me just about furious enough put the album on again from the start afterwards and so all I can say is good closer.
The band’s electro-industrial clatter makes a varied impact across the rest of the tracklist but it lands its blows where they count, as when “Life Hex” raises exactly the screeching hell that, say, Daughters would likely try to make today if half their roster hadn’t switched lanes to made it big as poster boys for the vileness outlined in “I’ll Ask Her”, or as when “Dodecahedron” takes me all the way back to the opening minutes of Skinny Puppy’s genre classic Too Dark Park. Do we need any more compliments? A record for the right time, but not a good time. And Billy Woods is on it. Yes! URGH. (7.0/10)
- Hugh Puddles
deathcrash - Somersaults
41:05 // February 27, 2026 // Untitled
The first two albums from slowcore revivalists deathcrash received a predictable reception - overwhelming praise from a certain contingent, some of whom not especially familiar with the legacy acts the group built their sound upon, being equaled by vociferous criticism from more jaded souls that the band had nothing new to say. Naturally, I was stuck in the middle of the furor, saying “hey, deathcrash are rather good, but this formula is gonna get old pretty fast”.
Third LP Somersaults sees the band finally shift their focus enough to feel fresh, and, almost as an afterthought, it’s easily their best record yet. The new style is something no one might have predicted - an amalgam of reliably glum slowcore tendencies with more accessible elements which recall both Fontaines D.C.’s album Romance and, even more so, the wave of 2000s post-Britpop acts. Declaring that deathcrash are now “the slowcore Coldplay” is certainly fun, but more melancholic groups like Doves or Elbow are probably the more apt comparison. Regardless, it works.
Somersaults is the most straightforward and radio-friendly deathcrash album by some margin - the songs are reliably of digestible length and the vocal style has been trimmed down to consistently clean indie/alternative stylings. Songs like the smooth title track and the more raucous “NYC” are catchy and prone to repeat in your head all day, but that doesn’t mean the band has fully retreated from their heavier tendencies - “Triumph” leans on lumbering riffage, and “Wrong to Suffer” is satisfyingly brooding. Through it all, deathcrash have retained their characteristically dark worldview - this is a depressing listen, even as its sound is decisively built to appeal to a broader audience. In that context, the “songs are supposed to be sad” line from “Love for M” reads like a mission statement - it’s also preferable if said songs are great, and the critical mass of these ones are. (8.0/10)
- Sunnyvale
Slave One - The Seraphic Conspiracy
40:18 // February 20th, 2026 // self-released
At this point, the waning frequency of noteworthy dissodeath releases has precipitated enough withdrawal symptoms in me that I find myself grasping at anything that breaks from the periphery of my habitual perception. Until everyone’s favorite 2020-era Gaben stunt double Luc unleashes everyone’s most anticipated genre tentpole on humanity later this year, smaller, inconspicuous releases like The Seraphic Conspiracy are a great way to bridge that gaping chasm and pacify the famishing retinue.
Their fourth full-length sees Slave One take a radical pivot, turning away from their, until recently, increasingly Gorodian eurotech to join the ranks of les apôtres du chaos sonore. Stylistically more linked to artists with short discogs than to 90s colossi, what’s presented here mostly treads the line between chunkier ‘Gojira gone disso’ bits and more convoluted arrangements with a light tech tinge that not infrequently reminded me of last year’s pair of releases from Burning Palace, including that band’s tendency to allude to a more atmosphere-focused concept which never quite materializes. Since it largely centers on a four-bars-this, four-bars-that flow, the whole affair is less messy than I would have liked, though the tighter structural integrity ultimately helps in the track distinction and memorability departments, which often work mandatory overtime in the case of bands more prone to digress. As such, I’d recommend this to completionists, scholars seeking a collection of less meandering compositions with a clear overarching identity, and neophytes alike. (7.0/10)
- Nex
Diva Karr - Call Me Nothing, the Absence
31:42 // February 27th, 2026 // self-released
Jumping from Diva Karr’s criminally overlooked 2019 debut, Healing, to this latest offering of theirs, I was pleased to discover they’ve doubled down on the incorporation of electronics. In direct comparison, this feels a lot less see-what-sticks, with both intent and execution being very clear-cut. The mood shifts effortlessly from bursts of raving anger to reflective pauses and back on several occasions without ever veering into emotionally manipulative territory or coming off as anything but pure, sincere, endogenous expression. Look, I could type up some trite metalspeak here, but suffice it to say that this is very good music created by some genuinely wonderful people. It’s the kind of album that, despite its overall reliance on amelodic means, sticks with you from the first spin. If you like your dissoblack noisy and/or the idea of combining late-2000s DsO with Plebeian Grandstand’s Lowgazers appeals to your predilections, you might as well make use of the player embedded above right this second. (7.5/10)
- Nex
Mastication of Brutality Uncontrolled - The Epoch of Anthropogenic Deities
38:51 // February 25th, 2026 // Show No Mercy
I honestly can’t remember the last weak year for brutal death metal, and it looks like 2026 is going to be yet another strong showing from one of the most consistently bustling scenes. Not only do new names keep breeding like rabbits with a deadline, but the train of surprise releases by bands long forgotten has no brakes either. Take this second outing by German-turned-international four-piece MoBU, released eleven years after their debut (feel old yet?): After Preemptive Space Warfare failed to leave a mark with its restrainedly technical take on slamming BDM, I was downright shocked to hear how big of a leap they’ve made on their new one. Sure, with only the abnormally (multi-)talented Flo Mayer remaining from the original line-up, the band now literally consisting of four out of Despondency’s five members, pervasive changes were to be expected – and make no mistake, if you dug 2024’s Matriphagy, you’ll feel right at home here – but it still takes a serious amount of artistic growth to basically ‘rebrand’ like this.
Just as the cast and its collective track record would have you expect, you’re greeted with all the hallmarks of a sovereignly convincing slam-affine brutech record. There’s pinches aplenty, a steady yet unformulaic alternation between blasts and stomping passages, a pronounced and piercing bass tone, and riff phrasing evoking a host of all-time greats, such as Gorgasm, Inveracity, Disgorge, or middle-era Defeated Sanity. While the DS association might in part be fueled by vocalist Konstantin Lühring’s work on Passages and Disposal, it’s also a testament to how MoBU don’t shy away from throwing subgenre-nonconformist ideas like the short detour into almost proggy progression patterns on “Digital Age Transhumanism” into the mix and underscores how fluid the band’s tempo and subtle stylistic shifts have become.
Where their first LP mostly felt groove-centric, the preponderant slam passages coming dangerously close to the forbidden brutal deathcore comparison with regularity, The Epoch of Anthropogenic Deities puts riffcraft and conclusive writing first. What it may lack in sheer innovativeness, it more than compensates with cohesion and conspicuous maturity. Goodbye bro-brees, hello enduring appeal! (7.5/10)
- Nex
Neuropsychosis - Doctrine of Damnation
17:32 // February 1st, 2026 // New Standard Elite
…And in uncannily similar fashion, Neuropsychosis are also barely recognizable after their recent facelift. There was nothing inherently wrong with Scourging Homicidal Premonitions, their debut LP; it just felt a little uninspired and, in hindsight, didn’t compare favorably to the many incredible BDM releases that came out alongside it in 2024 (DS, Brodequin, Wormed, Vomitrocious, Theurgy, Into the Ashes, and, surprise, Despondency – the list goes on). The thing I remember most vividly about it is the samples, which I thought distracted from the music rather than adding to it.
On to Doctrine of Damnation, then. The single New Standard Elite released last October was promising great things to come, and I’m happy to report that the band’s efforts to reverse-engineer their own modus operandi and reassemble the parts into something way, way more enthralling have turned out to be a major success. Now sharing a lot of DNA with the – thematically and atmospherically – darker strain of the genre popular among bands from Belarus and Russia but widely underrepresented in the Western Hemisphere, Neuropsychosis seem to have found their place in the world. This is far from a mere vibe change, though: When they’re not taking it sportscast-replay levels of slow (“Contorting Abysmal Realms of Aosoth”, “Callously Extinguished”), the technicality likewise has reached new heights. That said, they’ve always been favoring slightly looser play over exactitude and have retained that trait here, which lends the tracks a certain biotic quality.
Another constant is the excellent drumming by Kyle Gast, whose more delicate flourishes can get drowned out by the guitars’ immoderate drive at times. Part walking metronome, part wizard, the man immensely contributes to my general impression that this right here is about as granulating as three people can make death metal sound without rigging the game with electronic devices or backing tracks. His hyperactive, whole-kit-spanning twirling will properly engulf you.
With time being what it is and life giving you less and less of it as it progresses, a sub-twenty-minute runtime is the perfect fit for this kind of overstimulating music. Never mind the fact that EPs oftentimes serve as perfectly adequate snapshots of an artist’s momentary intentions, finding skipworthy filler on them is an incredibly rare phenomenon. That’s what happened here: You get to explore these guys’ newfound ardor through a highly compacted set of four acutely focused songs. If I have to choose between planning my day around sitting down with eighty minutes of Cryptic Shift’s celestial uberwank (love love love that record!) or spinning five of these in the same time that would take me, I’ll go with option B seven out of ten times. Subtract half a point from the rating if that’s not you. (8.0/10)
- Nex
Necropolissebeht - Taurunovem - Th’Astraktyan Serfdome
41:40 // February 20th, 2026 // Amor Fati
Axaazaroth (Nuclearhammer, Paroxsihzem) on drums meets solos by Ryan Förster (Blasphemy, Death Worship), meets Hekla-core (Hadopelagyal, Pale Spektre). If you care about blackdeath or, more specifically, war metal, your ears will likely be pricked by now, and rightly so. While other supergroups may struggle to meet expectations, not uncommonly having to compromise on and trade off their individual strengths against finding a common denominator beyond their private sympathies, here the members’ musical backgrounds boast so much overlap that the collaboration is as cumulative as it is audibly in sync.
Sadly (or fortunately?), I’m not kvlt enough to give you a detailed rundown of this collective’s or even just the album’s key influences. What I will say, though, is that I’ve been increasingly enjoying the company of this all-devouring, nihilistic style of music. Letting the blast beats and beastly tones rain down on me, bathing in them, forgetting about the daily tribulations, if just for a fleeting moment, and entering a state of total clarity (or total ignorance?) in the process has proven to be an effective remedy for the persistent desire to block out all news ever, forever. This album excels in that regard.
One of its more easily identifiable idiosyncrasies lies in the guitarwork. The riffs are raw and played semplice from start to finish, but not entirely puristic. At several points they convey a ‘winging it’ sensation, with the song now practically approximating the feel of a jam session. It gets pretty wild quickly, especially once you realize the drumming isn’t actually a single blast played for forty minutes straight as you had initially made it out to be. In fact, there are lots of tricky little details embellishing the iterative, elliptical progressions from beneath their never-ending barrage.
As an abrupt closing thought, I vastly prefer this to their debut, which apparently has been a common theme across my picks this time. Oh no! Have you heard? They’re going t- (7.0/10)
- Nex
Submersion - Inhering
36:00 // February 20th, 2026 // insectorama
Inhering? I barely even know him! And he’s a shy boy: a glacial slab of ambient prefaces three dub techno cruisers that bring to mind Deepchord, Yagya at his most gauzy, and alternating thoughts of snow and (chiefly) sleep. It’s too steeped in permafrost to be the most obvious genre rec from recent times (see KYO’s Outtemporary for that, also out on insectorama), but it wears this palette well enough to coast as ambience and handily rewards a little patience with the slow thaw that does occur throughout the latter two tracks (”Inhering IV” in particular sees through the steadiest of slow builds for a shiver-inducing finale). This album may not drown out the void, but it will freeze your chicken. (7.0/10)
- Hugh Puddles