G’day, Mate!

The Australian metal scene’s off to a fantastically strong start in the first quarter. We’ve got the recent release from Queensland death-doomers Malignant Aura (see here for our Gig Review coverage of their Where All Of Worth Comes To Wither album-launch + here for an additional Gallery of Brewicide with additional photography/footage) receiving huge critical acclaim, a snappy new EP from veterans The Eternal in Celestial, plus far too many others to mention.

I’ll take a page out of both bands’ books and shut my yap - plenty of ripper tracks from both new releases for discussion! See below for album reviews, album streams and additional media/links.

From the sleepy hollows of the Bellarine Peninsula, salutations from myself are in order to both Circle of Blood and Battlegrave for releasing two smashing LP’s via In Praise of Darkness and Enslavement, respectively.

Speaking of respect - there’s only way to show that, and that’s with your continued support! If you like what you’ve sampled, consider following through the links to nab yourselves some new album-loot.

Supporting the music scene starts locally; it starts with you.

Get out there and support your local scene!

Peace, Love and Advancing Australian (Musical and Absolutely NOT Strait of Hormuz-Blocking) Warfare - Brady.

Circle of Blood (Melbourne, Aus) - In Praise of Darkness

*Credit:* ***Misanthropic Art Illustrations*** *(see below for Instagram profile link)*

Genre: Old-School Death Metal/Death-Thrash

Release Date/Label: 26th March, 2026 via Grindhead Productions

Recording/Mixing/Mastering: Reece Hickey

Cover Art: Misanthropic-Art (@misanthropicartillustrations)

I find it’s easy to give ups, rep and recognition to Aussie battlers in the local scene, but harder to keep attentive to all but the cream of the crop of Australian metal releases. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the otherwise convenient and artist-led proliferation of media across a panoply of streaming services, apps and social media feeds. Blink and you’ll not only miss it, you might not even hear it.

Well, I’m here to stick a stake in the listener sheep-fence, plant down a solid cordon of barbed-wire and get the dogs rounding the lot of you flamin’ galahs back up to the top paddock. Cause Circle of Blood rips, and so does their brutishly genuine take on old-school death metal’s fastest and least pretentious canon.

Granted, this is a band with a long-established presence on Melbourne’s live circuit, and local readers with a penchant for the extreme will undoubtedly have either caught these hard-gigging dudes live, or at the least heard the name. I first caught awareness of these guys at a local show where the ‘Blood were on the bill supporting headliners Faceless Burial for the release of their killer LP, Speciation - Old Bar, I believe? Damn. Just, damn dude. Instant fan. The band blew my socks off then, just as they’ve done multiple times on the live front since. That they’ve finally got a full-release out into the Internet-wilds has me chuffed on their behalf.

And thus, we begin.

A slow warble of noisy feedback implies either a momentary refrain before the mayhemic destruction, or perhaps it’s just a signifier of some instrumental-only prelude. Thanking Beelzebub below that its’ the former, we’re immediately castigated for our listening habits and thrown deep into perdition from the get-go, with a vehemently explosive opener care of first track ‘Casca’.

Seriously, this one starts out strong. By the twenty-second mark, you’ve got the first salvo of what is to be an unyielding torrent of rhythm-section fortitude and perseverance. The endless rapid-fire machine gunnery of Chris Green’s basslines and Peter Colaiaco’s bedevilled work on the skins starts up here, and it barely relents for the entire album. Chopping through thick riffs like a steel axe through saplings, Dave McCarthy joins his bassist compadre in spewing all forms of hellish, guttural belching, shrieks and puncturing roars. The progression from a simple, morose lead straight into a blast furnace of jagged early-era Morbid Angel riffage is a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. Other than that, though? The track is just pure unforgiving death metal; old-school with a crisp and stylised production that isn’t overdone, care of one Reece Hickey.

With death metal, you’ll typically hear dual vocal duties oft parsed by separate registers for a constrasting impact. You’ve got your deep-growl guy, and your high-pitched murder-bird offering a more blackened spittle atop the DM-burps. Circle of Blood eschew this trend, instead utilising both vocalists weaving throughout vocal ranges and styles. Both vocalists belt out one hell of a bestial dual scream on the opening track in several places, introducing a stylistic shift from straight DM fury to a more thrashing gallop to round off a frenetic first track.

To quote a former Prime Minister of ours - “Fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate”!

One fair shake’s all you get, though.

Best stow that metaphorical sauce bottle, lest it go flying through the air with the hunk of meat that was, until the opening stings of second track ‘Immolation’, half your arm still secured to your body. The berserker-rage fury and Neanderthal-coded primalism oozing from this track could have them sounding like Jungle Rot also-rans…were they not clearly and cleverly building death-metal strategem from such a broad historical playbook. And so, thudding with sudden calamity, the track dive-bombs straight into the endless tinkling and whirring of Colaiaco’s kit, an unceasing swirl of tremolo and palm-muting interrupted only by harmonics, savage keelhauling to and from slamming riffs to surefooted, double-kick inflected death.

The sophomore track continues, swirling thuggish punk attitude through the tracks’ midsection, and it’s one of many deliciously punk-riff moments strewn across the album. Indeed, there’s just enough of a smattering of Gojira-esque choppy grooves strewn throughout the album to provide brief stopgaps, pauses for much-needed breath. These ain’t your Polaris mosh-shorts wearin’ Unify-friendly grooves either; if anything, they’re staccato stabs and punches with palm-muting as the cudgel.

‘Legions Rise’ builds upon the swingy, anthemic feel ousting the previous track, to great effect. A scathing oratory snaerky over a punchy mid-tempo stomp that flits about with time-signatures to threats of crucifixion, reborn malevolence and the dying of godly light. “No Salvation! No forgiveness! False promises comfort fools!” are just some of the gang-chanted refrains that punctuate what feels like a slimy, serpentine writher of a track, adding to that very same punk-rock ethos so integral to the old-school modus operandi. This progresses on to some very meaty, spindly death-thrash riffing before finally giving way to a brutal, triplet-heavy slamming breakdown. Hot damn, that riff hits like a truck full of Dying Fetus.

See for yourself! - check out ‘Legions Rise’ via Youtube below:

‘Tentacular Invasion’ has me momentarily pondering if they’ll start with some random ahegao/anime sample; thankfully, the hentai-titled track keeps things explicit in a death metal sense. (I ain’t yucking your yum if that’s what you’re into, but it’d be a head-turner on an occultic-themed extreme-metal album, that’s for sure). There’s a stacking and layering of arpeggios against riffs and complex, churning coin-twirl riffs in this one, the trio acting in unison to produce something overstimulating and labyrinthine. Rising from the commotion comes lashings of thrash metal, melodeath, hardcore and more, all interspersed nicely underneath a firmly old-school death metal skin. The production on the album really helps differentiate what is an effortful smattering of so many subtle little licks, leads, drum-fills and bass-punches, too. I’m glad the band are sounding both crisp and dirt-choked on their first LP.

You don’t need stellar production to hear of our vocalists’ lament in being sacrificed upon a heathenistic altar, though. Not when such vocal refrains ring out clear as glass - if one was gargling glass, that is - to introduce ‘Bastard Child of a Coward God’ with gnashing fury. The venom and vitriol on this one kicks up a notch from prior tracks, weaving and ducking from death to doom in frantic shadow-boxed feints around the listener. Frantic Slayer-esque soloing peels in and out of otherwise relentless riffing, the bass tones coming through like crisp, punchy slabs of corrugated metal sonic-boom. There’s a little ‘bring back the riff but slower’ moment in the tracks’ dying moments, drawing out some of that old-school influence for a simplistic and classic-metal evil feel via A Big Ol’ Goddamn Riff outro. Tasty.

Speaking of Slayer, Lombardo just called about the drumming on the intro to ‘Dethronement’. ‘Cause we regularly get members of The Big Four calling us up… yeah. Anyway, the track surpasses our American thrash overlords’ engine capacity, hurtling into its’ own vicious web of intricate spider-web riffery. There’s a tantalising interplay here between lead trilling and watertight tremolo that bleeds over into another like strands of aural barbed wire. Dual refrains chant cultist hymnals like “Rejoice, our son is born against the world/Rejoice, our Lord of lust and flame!” to the ting-ting (not The Ting-Tings, thanks Satan/Atheismo/whoever) of cymbals, before the track closes out in a drawling rumble.

‘Defiler’? I barely even know ‘er (there’s a small but absolutely non-zero chance someone has or will spout that as a heckle, it’s just too easy). All you need to know about this little ditty is, it’s about the fastest and most savage of any number on this ode to barbarism. It swings, hews and cleaves with the muscular heft of a practiced death-metal warrior. It slices, it dices, it even juliennes! Aurally slicing us apart on a particularly gnarly run of sheer death metal abdomen-shanking. There’s a martial consistency and pacing through this one that feels equal parts death metal and d-beat, giving an almost powerviolence vibe to the album’s shortest pissed-off-little-shit of a track.

Do away with bad music-press puns and experience ‘Defiler’ for real-real, over here:

‘Devouring The Sleeping Entombed’ picks up what little gristle and meat paste is left of the listener, grinding it into a groovier, punchy introduction with rolling peaks and troughs that feel like a late 80’s/early 90’s Floridian death washing-machine. The vocal back-and-forth feels like two greater imps fighting for the position of hellish chieftain, battle-lines feverishly parsed by some seriously wicked and frantic drum fills. There’s an enmeshment between the old-school-reinterpreted… school (Bloodbath et al) with some seriously impressive and technical riffage that wouldn’t be left off a Hate Eternal album either. That’s the thing, guys - OSDM is often a moniker that gives some folks licence to

‘Grant Me Strength’ is what your average gateway-band metalhead or kid in a Sleep Token shirt might be saying by this juncture. Well I’m sorry Sonny Jim, but Slipknot’s IOWA and Butchered At Birth are back there - come back after you’ve done your homework, and you might be ready in time to cop an even greater intensifying of speed and Satanic intent (“O’ Satan, grant me the strength to destroy!”) - be sure to do some study on black metal while you’re there, too. The fast stuff, at that. Lurching savagely like a zombie from 28 Days/Weeks/Years/Millenia/Whatever later, the track is just snapping pure rabidity from start to finish.

‘The God Hand’ feels bequeathed to Circle of Blood with the grace of one Glen Benton himself - it’s just that dripping with pure, hellish malevolence. There’s some very brief flirtation with semi-clean guitar and sorta-kinda ample breathing room in the mix on this everything-bucket closer. In true metalhead form, they’ve saved the most claustrophobic and epically encyclopedic demonstration of their craft until last, and thus In Praise of Darkness ends with a track so disastrously and deliberately mangled, you’d swear it came wrapped up in plaster casts and a back-brace. No extreme-metal fan is ever going to fall for the median guitar lilting - you know full well what’s next. That’s right, end the whole occultic bastard on a particularly savage, scream filled din.

Circle of Blood have made a name for themselves in Melbourne on the live front, and now In Praise of Darkness serves as a fittingly bruising, brutal introduction of this local act to the world stage. Stay a while, and listen…

LINKS:

Circle of Blood:

grindhead records:

Official Label Site

Grindhead Records - LinkTree

(see for: Grindhead Productions site/ Youtube Channel/ Facebook/ Instagram (@grindheadrecords)

Grindhead Productions - LinkTree

(see for: Events/Ticket Links for GP Tours (Rotten Sound, etc)/ Facebook/Bandcamp/Facebook/Instagram (@grindheadproductions)

BATTLEGRAVE (AU) - Enslavement

Genre: Death Metal/Technical Thrash Metal

Release Date/Label: 10th April, 2026 via Independent Release

“Well farrr-k me?! Orrite then, kaants!”
(Bogan-Translator: “Seriously? If this is how it goes, then so be it, fellow [redacted expletives]!”)

What’s got me bellowing obscenities like a half-pissed Dad punching on with a disagreeable parent during the kids’ Saturday footy match? Why, it’s Battlegrave’s latest Earth-scorching incendiary strike Enslavement, of course! The band act as a two-piece for the purpose of recording and songwriting, with Clint Patzel (Guitar/Bass/Synth) and Rohan Buntine (Vocals) pairing up with session-drummer Robin Stone & Daniel Mackie for guest lead guitar solos on the LP. Lineups often chop and change for performances, however the core duo have taken the lion’s share of songwriting duties for the follow-up to 2024’s white-knuckle 3rd release Cavernous Depths.

Being such a good listener, you might want to pay heed to my next words: Mark this blistering, thrashing assault on the senses as one not to be consumed lightly, kindly or in passing. I extend that invitation to even the most steely-eyed lovers of technical thrash, death-thrash and similar, as Battlegrave have really done us all a number by somehow increasing the war-themed fury factor to an exasperating level on their latest offering.

It’s that intense, in fact, that I’m going to eschew the traditional song-by-song trope for starters and make some neopolitan ice-cream out of the first three tracks, combining the overall sentiments into one. This is isn’t to say blitzkrieg opener ‘Soul Chasm’, flat-footed armoured personnel carrier follow-up ‘There Is Only Death’ nor the extremely titular-appropriate ‘Bonesaw’ don’t deserve their own merits. They sure as hell do.

It’s moreso that this trifecta of blistering hellfire rips fast at such frenetic pace that it almost escapes recognition. A sub-ten-minute triplicate tsunami of technical, blinding and completely unforgiving death-thrash. You’re forgiven for double-checking what link you thumbed play on; it isn’t in fact Discordance Axis. There’s particular homage paid to the 90’s/2000’s school of acts such as Dew Scented, The Crown and others, but in honesty the latter band deserves mention as there’s a very strong strain of technical grindcore littered throughout Enslavement - particularly the first three savage brutes.

‘Eyes of Enslavement’ eases up on the thrash-flirtations and moves to strike by way of pure death metal carnage, by comparison. A seething and endlessly rolling barrage of blistering kicks gut-punches like the fist-storm of a Dragonball Z character, Rohan whirring rabid, endless barks, shrieks and the occasional gruff growl like a man tortured and beyond reason. It’s only when a jagged and distended breakdown riff towards the end lets up that we find a certain choppy, off-kilter form of (very) relative peace - that’s precisely when our sesh-mate Daniel fires off with a blistering solo to punctuate a thudding, chunky breakdown to close out.

‘Venom’ follows up with the vague promise of… hmm, perhaps an interlude, by the sounds? Some atmospheric ambience lulls us falsely if but for a few seconds. Barely a measure into the electronic warble, a thundering tank-tread of bludgeoning death-thrash trundles all hope of calm under a determined, militaristic death metal march. It’s Battlegrave doing what it says on the tin - war is hell, and the riff-bullets are tearing from instruments like rounds in a pepperbox machine-gun. Whilst I felt the bass was a little more occluded overall in the mix for this album, there’s a stank, clanking presence here that is just tasty and delectable, grating harshly as yet another climactic pounder of a riff demolishes our ears to send off. All in around two minutes. Again - damn, man.

‘The Grand Machine of Despair’ threatens further cardiovascular health risks, blasting in a furor of intricate, blistering, thrashy riff-carnage for a solid five-minute run. Vocally, there’s some interesting inflections here, some extra grit within the higher-register shrieks and all manner of what sound honestly like individuals lamenting a limb blown off. There’s a strong Converge-ian bent to the wailing and hollering, hardcore-styled barks that punctuate deeper bellows and blackened growls. The feverish and urgent immediacy of Clint’s tremolo blasts give the sensation of musical laceration, a frenzied death-metal stabbing that only gets more haphazard as the rhythm section continues to intensity unabated.

Chopping ‘Grand Machine’s’ tail-end away with some analog foley-style effects, we then proceed with little notice straight into intermission track ‘Asylum’. This brief sojourn utilises its’ own jarring, sudden placement, with eerily 80’s-horror-VHS coded synth and distorted, effects-drenched instrumentation. It’s two minutes of disturbing soundscape, a moody ambient interlude punctuated by the rise and fall of what sounds like air-raid sirens as guitars claw evilly in, blackened chords throwing a sinister veil over what would otherwise be intended as a reprieve. The deliberation of a mournful tremolo line doesn’t help reduce the spooky factor, either. Not exactly a rest-stop, but a cool little palate cleanser all the same.

No points, then, for correctly assuming something epic is just around the corner. Interludes are kind of like the pile of stimpaks, ammo and cool guns you find in a neat, convenient pile - right outside the entry to a blazing boss-fight. Clocking in at seven minutes, ‘Marked By Evil’ lulls one into false security with a simplistic, gravelly bassline, supported by a chunky mid-tempo chug riff. Not even Buntine’s gravel-rash vocals threaten to fully disrupt what feels like some form of inertia, of slowdown. The latter half slowly builds speed like a bruised linebacker attempting the final charge before possession changes hands again.

‘Under The Banner We March’ reveals the hidden Easter-egg of ferocity teased by the slower pacing of the previous track, bursting out the gate with a furious bombardment of death/thrash-metal artillery fire. Robin’s drumming takes on a brand new intensity here, feeling less like he’s occupying sonic space and moreso planting a flag of conquest atop your already-beleaguered senses. Widdling and snappy soloing from in the midsection, surrounded by the endless caterwauling of double-kick/tremolo machine-gun fire. X’s vocals take on that throaty, deeper-register bellow, juxtaposing against the harsh, grating piercing shrieks and hardcore-inflected barks comprising a majority of the album elsewhere. The band have fun with this one, injecting all manner of lead, bass and synth trickery alongside drumwork that feels both schizoid and mechanically precise.

‘US Outpost 131’ brings all and sundry to the table, a last final wail of post-traumatic combat-shock angst that feels like warborn death-thrash screaming into the void, one last time. That all-familiar relentless tremolo slides out the drawer, holding back for just a moment before we cop a run of seriously old-school, deliciously-Deicide riffing, chopped and choked up in a very punk/thrash stop-start canter. “Somehow, Palpatine returned” might be the shittiest line in cinema history (thanks, Abrams, and not the tank), but befuddlement’s the name of the listener-game right now - there is somehow, somewhere, a hyper-aggressive increase in both technicality, speed and savagery for the final blasting crescendo. Culturally-Australian oppositional defiant disorder has well and truly kicked in, folks, our convict-descendent brethren seeing out this album in a final blasting gut-punch of riffs, snappy warbling leads, clattering drums and throaty growls, roars and pained barks.

No tinkling piano, no backing female vocalist lilting sweet nothings, no softly echoing some Bill Hicks quotes to ten minutes of reverb. Just being kicked in the cochlear nut-sack unyieldingly as you pretty much have experienced the entire time, and then? Boom. Done.

Hey, that’s combat kiddo - not much time to pontificate Enslavement with a modern death-thrash .308 round having just passed through your cranium, after all.

I’m glad Battlegrave exist. Truly. They represent a much-needed niche-filler in the Australian scene when it comes to tried-and-true, unrelenting death-thrash. Specifically, there’s a bit of a dearth of bands doing a Warbringer but elevating that to the death/thrash tier, but Enslavement serves as a resounding cannon-blasted charge up the trenches for the Australian death metal scene as a whole.

Battlegrave - Links:

Robin Stone - Session Musician (IG: @robin_stone_drums)

Check out the Full-Album Stream of Enslavement via Battlegrave’s official Youtube account here:

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Peace, Love and Grindcore - Brady & The ISC Team.