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Discs of Auspicious Vision

Tag: Review

  • The Recreant – The Code is V… Outlive The Code (2026) | Album Review

    David

    Recently I was chatting with a friend who I don’t see often enough. We had just eaten Italian sandwiches the size of our heads and were sprawled out across a couple couches in my living room, giving our bellies the space they now so desperately needed. In a fugue state perhaps brought about with marinara, hot peppers, and veal cutlets we got talking about what authenticity is and what it means to live authentically.

    The discussion on authenticity circled well-tread talking points– sticking to well-defined core values and navigating a world where non-conforming authenticity is often punished. One point he mentioned far more eloquently than I ever could that a key part of living authentically is allowing and helping others live authentic lives of their own. To quote some post (on Twitter? on Tumblr?) floating around in my head: “If you want to be a part of a community, you have to be willing to be a villager”.

    Alicia Cordisco has been the embodiment of authenticity in metal communities both mainstream and underground for longer than I’ve been a metal musician. Ferociously unwavering in her morals and ethics and unbelievably prolific (especially in the past few years), she has lived her life in defiance of the shitheads and bootlickers, channeling the power of metal protest music in one sub-genre or another.

    The Recreant marks Alicia’s further push into the denim-and-spike-clad world crust punk and crossover thrash. I say further since her anarchist death/ thrash band Transgressive released a cover of Aus-Rotten‘s “Fuck Nazi Sympathy” on the first of their trilogy of 2025 EPs Remember Us to Death. Obviously no stranger to the genre as a fan, Alicia uses The Recreant to continue exploring this genre on the project’s 2026 debut album The Code is V… Outlive The Code.

    Okay, first thing’s first. Since Allie is undoubtedly a realhead and cut from the same wear-your-influences-on-your-sleeve cloth as I, the nod to Napalm Death‘s killer 2005 album The Code is Red… Long Live The Code does not go unnoticed around these parts. Beyond the title format, the font used on both album covers is about as close as you can get, as well. This may seem like just some small, inane detail, but it’s one of those things that gets me excited to crack into an album. When little references like this make their way into underground art I know it was made with passion and fervour. With authenticity. You put that shit in there because you want to, be cause it’s something you want to see, and something you stand by. I’ve talked to my own bandmates about this, putting in little nods and references to works that influence us for the one-in-eight-thousand people who might actually notice and get excited about it. In a world flooded more and more every day with a deluge of smoothed out, corporate slop designed to make you feel as ambivalent as possible, little flashbangs of personality like this are so affirming and energizing to see.

    By my count, Alicia’s output last year alone totaled 3 Transgressive EPs, an album under her own name, and a new Wraithstorm single, so to see another full length album come out where she helms the project’s songwriting, lyric writing, and leads its operations is frankly, dizzying. As someone who makes music myself, I’m always curious about the workflow of others and how they maintain momentum. I’ve been a friend and a fan of Alicia’s for a good few years now and seeing her add The Recreant to her portfolio of riff-slinging projects, trust me: you will get quality and quantity.

    The opening seconds of The Code is V… are reminiscent of Transgressive‘s sampled intro on “Thirteen Twelve”, lampooning idiot cops (redundant descriptor) before the band kicks in. Immediately, as the lumbering basslines and saturated, old school overdriven guitars take over, you get a sense of this album’s presentation. Fast. Loose. Pissed the fuck off. I want to be clear and precise with my use of the word loose. It’s not sloppy. Allie is an accomplished guitar player who holds herself to high enough standards that implying she’d release something sloppy is insulting. But considering this album’s roots in crossover thrash and crust punk, I see the looser playing as a stylistic choice, and one that adds to the whirlwind of outrage that The Code is V… offers up.

    Riffs on this album swing between low string chugging thrash riffs that would start a pit in a snap-instant, and rise up to ’80s hardcore style power chord progressions for choruses or interstitial sections between vocals. There’s an intangible quality to the guitar playing– you can easily visualize the poor guitar strings, assailed by a ballistic picking hand hammering down on them. Breaking up the more traditional crossover riffing are moments of heavy-metalisms, the intro to “Compliance to Z72.52” sounding like it could easily have come off any seminal Finnish death metal album from between 1989 to 1991 and the semi-titular “V Coded” bringing an undeniable heavy metal swagger with some overt melodicism woven in to the rhythm guitars for the first time in the album.

    These energetic instrumental performances back up typically solo prog-thrasher Ruby Rockatansky‘s absolutely frenzied vocal delivery. I’d never heard Ruby’s music or vocals before The Recreant but goddamn this girl’s got pipes. Most of the time she sits in a mid-range bark but has the chops and range to dive into truly guttural territory and back up to a searing high vocal fry that wouldn’t be out of place on early Scandinavian extreme metal releases. The pissed-offedness of this album is apparent by the riffing, yes, but Ruby’s vocals really present The Code is V…‘s lyrics plainly with one firm middle finger up (the other hand is clenched in a fist, cocked back, ready to send your nose cartilage back into your skull).

    The versatility of Ruby’s voice augments the myriad of lyrical subjects tackled on The Code is V… and while this album is fucking angry, that anger is honed to a razor edge, a weapon used to swing at transphobia, neoliberalism and idle centrists, abusers and rapists, and atrocities against queer folks in the United States prison systems (see: V-Coding), one after another. This could very easily have become an unfocused and less affecting rage if these lyrics were penned by a more amateur hand, but reading through Alicia’s lyrics as Ruby spits them out shows a fury that, unfortunately, can only come from someone who experiences these injustices and cruelties first-hand.

    If there’s one person I can say lives authentically, it’s Allie. And if there’s one person I can say pushes others to live authentically, it’s (surprise) also Allie.

    She is more than just one who suffers at the hand of a draconian system and its perpetrators. In the near-half-decade that I’ve known her, she has always been a light for people, someone who unabashedly looses rallying cries for others to join her cause and to help lift each other up and fight back against the fascists and those who would see marginalized people trampled under boot-heel.

    The album’s opener lays this underpinning of hope and push to action for the listener, opening with:

    We’re stronger together
    You can’t do it alone
    Survival is resistance
    You’re not on your own

    And ending it’s final verse with:

    Get up off your knees
    It’s time to join hands
    Stand against the oppressor
    And give back this land

    Be fucking angry, and do something about it.

    All this leads us to the only question that matters:

    Is it Sick?

    Yes.

    The Code is V… Outlive the Code was released on February 9th, 2026 and is available on The Recreant‘s Bandcamp page and vinyl can be ordered through their Elastic Stage profile.

    The Context Zone™️

    In addition to the album reviewed above, I also listened to the following music to try and get a bit more context for this release and/ or to cultivate the right headspace:

    • Transgressive – Extreme Transgression (2023)
    • Napalm Death – The Code is Red… Long Live the Code (2005)
    • Aus-Rotten – …And Now Back to Our Programming (1998)
    • Aus-Rotten – Fuck Nazi Sympathy (1994)
    • Ruby Rockatansky – The Estrogenesis Initiative: Althaea and Synthia’s Quest For Romantic Vengeance Against a Vile Authority (2024)

  • Teitanblood – From the Visceral Abyss (2025) | Album Review

    David

    I hate Metal Promo™️ lingo, and I will do my utmost best not to succumb to describing how any particular album’s “whirring chainsaw guitars will eviscerate you” or “necromantic wails from beyond the grave howl out in pain” or whatever. If you catch me indulging in any ergregious act of Metal-Promo-lingo-izing, feel free to take me out back and fucking shoot me.

    In Metal Promo™️ lingo, particularly relentlessly heavy bands are often called “crushing” or “suffocating”. Hell, even the blurb on Teitanblood‘s own Bandcamp page says their 2025 release From the Visceral Abyss “forges a suffocating atmosphere”.

    I don’t think that’s the case.

    No, I’m not being a contratian. No, I’m not engagement bating. Let me explain.

    “Crushing” and “suffocating” are localized affairs. You are crushed. While one can be crushed by something gigantic, the only scale of the relevant action here is as big as the victim. Same with suffocation. They’re both claustrophobic. Personal.

    Teitanblood instead offer something grander and uncaringly huge in scope on From the Visceral Abyss. Slicing winds strip your flesh as you look out over an ash covered wasteland, ruins of imperceptible age piercing the hostile terrain, stretching out into infinity.

    Wait, don’t shoot just yet.

    In a word, From the Visceral Abyss is big. While the band is as liberal with its use of blast beats and dissonant, atonal guitar playing as ever, there’s a sense of air between the instruments that I haven’t noticed in previous releases from the band. While the LP from France’s Norma Evangelium Diaboli spins on my turntable, the guitars sound distant, as if their cabinets are roaring several feet behind my main speakers. Drums ring out with plenty of reverb, while cascading across the stereo field (panned from drummer’s perspective, as god intended). Bubbling under all of this are the vocals, equally as distant and cold as well as additional layers of guitar– atonal solos and divebombs adding even more abrasive texture to the whole presentation.

    The solos are buried in the mix across the whole album, which is honestly a welcome change from black/ death metal bands’ typical piercing, in-your-face placement. I revisited their 2014 masterpiece simply titled Death and the difference in scale was staggering. A decade ago, they were serving up vicious music no doubt, but it was a frenzied melee– they offered the listener no space to find respite from the music. No longer is Teitanblood a snarling beast mauling you through speaker cones, but an unflinching portal to a far less personal yet equally deadly realm. Unflinching. Cold. Almost Lovecraftian in it’s lack of empathy for you. They show confidence in their creative choices, their intuition well honed after over 20 years in the game.

    Very briefly, stints of melody poke their head through the dizzying cacophony. These are welcome respites, offering something, anything for your mind to hold on to and make sense of. Sometimes they take the form of tremolo picked melodies lower on the fretboard, othertimes as jangly, arpeggiated chords ringing out. From the Visceral Abyss is definitely an album that needs multiple listens to fully reveal it’s secrets to those willing to receive them. Not to say it isn’t enjoyable on first spin, but if your first impression is anything more nuanced and coherent than “that was… damn”, I’d think you were lying.

    While Side A absolutely rips, Side B is where things start to shift, keeping you on your toes. “Strangling Visions” barely swerves in and out of ’80s thrash and speed metal territory, never fully giving in to the genre switch up but flirting with a leather-clad chord progression(?!) under a particularly fist-pumping solo. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t Teitanblood going soft, this is the LaCroix of heavy metal influence. Somebody left the From the Visceral Abyss masters lying next to a 1987 Gibson Explorer overnight.

    The near-fifteen-minute closer “Tomb Corpse Haruspex” opens with ominous chords reminding me so much of the lumbering intro to Mick Gordon‘s theme for “Nekravol: Part 1” from DOOM Eternal‘s untouchable soundtrack I nearly let muscle memory take over to ready an SSG-Balista quickswitch combo on some imagined controller. Not today, cybermancubus. The rest of the song, following suit with the first two-thirds of the album picks up energy– blasting, swirling, occasionally allowing a melody to surface, and just generally ripping– complete with a couple Conqueror style pick scrapes just for good measure. Trumpets blare in apocalyptic glory as the track reaches its conclusion, becoming swallowed up in impenetrable reverb, feedback, howling winds, an unintelligible monologue, and finally one last piercing bray.

    I suppose despite my best intentions, even I cannot shake the curse of using Metal Lingo™️. It’s in my blood, well entrenched in my past. I’ll fetch the super shotgun.

    From the Visceral Abyss is available everywhere and can be purchased on Bandcamp.

  • Resthaven – Lunarwave (2025) | Album Review

    David

    I’m a relative newcomer to the Ontario metal underground. I’ve been a fan of metal for closing on two decades, but not until World Eaters began playing live did I really start engaging with the scene around me. Musician faux-pas, I know. But beyond that, it was also fucking stupid of me, because Ontario has some absolutely killer bands dropping albums left and right.

    Toronto’s Resthaven have released their second full length, Lunarwave in February of this year, following their 2023 self-titled debut.

    Hissing guitar feedback gives way to gang vocals punctuating twin guitar leads stripped straight from any given blue-castle-on-the-cover black metal album from the mid 90s. The sword-swinging leads are contrasted by thrashing turnarounds and barking vocals, solidifying the swirling mix of influences that make up the foundation of Resthaven‘s newest effort.

    But just marrying black metal and thrash isn’t particularly exciting by itself. This is where Resthaven‘s strength lies– in slowly letting Lunarwave open up as it goes on, inviting the listener to bask in the kaleidescopic array of other genres that float around that black/ thrash core.

    There’s a playfulness in the songwriting on Lunarwave that is tough to explain. The album is heavy, definitely, and a serious offering– it isn’t doing a bit nor is it tongue in cheek in the way it shifts gears across it’s 33 minute run time. It is, however, undoubtable that the members of Resthaven are in fact, real ones and built their music (at least partially) out of love for their favourite artists and albums. The riffs on this album aren’t made by people who think At the Gates starts and ends at Slaughter of the Soul. When you ask a member of Resthaven for a Swedish death metal album recommendation, they pull Uncanny‘s Splenium for Nyktophobia off of the shelf. Resthaven are studied fans and are clearly stoked to be making music in the style(s) that they love.

    The title track brings in some of Dan Swanö’s signature goth rock sensibility both in the melodramatic (complimentary) intro as well as during the bridge to build up to a phenomenal catharsis once the snaking chorus reprises. “Left in the Gutter” swings far into the post-hardcore leanings you’d find in countless anime openings, layering chanting over more vulnerable vocal wails and extended chords bouncing along with aplomb. It’s frankly a little jarring on first listen hearing this J-rock inspired tune after the previous song’s pummelling pace, but it pretty quickly clicks in place as both being cohesive with the underlying vibe of the album while also providing a much needed break from the HM-2 riffing, which only gets more claustrophobic and hardcore inspired as the record continues.

    A band after my own heart, Resthaven features local musicians (and presumably their friends) on a couple tracks, with Blood Wraith dropping gut-rippling gutterals on “SUSOV” and Consuming Misery following suit on “Punished” as the song drops to an Asphyx-like crawl. Both features bring another dimension to Lunarwave‘s already multifaceted approach. We love homies helping homies.

    My only gripe with Lunarwave would be the guitar production. It runs amok with wily HM-2 tones, and while the riffing channels Dismember, Crowbar, and Nails in equal measures (Nails especially on the spin-kick worthy outro of “Nibelheim”), it doesn’t seem to have the muscle behind the tone that I want to hear.

    It isn’t anything that actually drags the album down, but a wistful “what if” that just drapes across my mind. As far as I can discern, the band mixed, and mastered Lunarwave entirely on their own and that in itself is a triumph. It’d also be remiss of me not to say as a fellow HM-2 owner that, yeah, dialing in a tone on that shitbox is hard as fuck. The amount of times I’ve clicked mine on mid-set thinking I was about to get gnarly just to have my guitar playing swallowed up by a wall of scooped, fizzy noise is more than I care to admit. Resthaven, thankfully avoids such an amateur move in their production. The choice to keep the bass rumbling along with a powerful, warm and clean tone keeps every instrument in their own lane and stops things from getting too messy.

    Some folks wax about how easy musicians have it these days with home studios and the ability to record completely DIY, but let me tell you from first hand experience that doing it DIY is fucking hard and anything coming out sounding as good as this album sounds overall should be celebrated.

    So, if I’m not gonna be a weenie about the production, where does that leave me on Lunarwave? It rocks. It gets a “hell yeah” from me. This is a blend of black metal, thrash, death metal, and hardcore that is so refreshing to hear. It deftly dodges the hardcore/ death metal trend that erupted from labels like the 2022 Maggot Stomp roster by just pulling from references a bit off the beaten path. Edge of Sanity rather than Suffocation. Black Breath rather than Terror. In doing so the band isn’t whipping up copy-cat riffs, but instead flexing their ability to dissect what makes those artists great and weave something unique and engaging out of those inspirations.

    Which brings us to the only question that matters:

    Is it sick?

    Yes.

    You can listen to Lunarwave on all major streaming platforms and on Resthaven‘s bandcamp.