On a mission to prove that everything, even metal, is bigger in Texas, San Antonio-based quintet Upon a Burning Body  batter crowds with their driving brand of mosh-ready deathcore. Delivering plenty of massive riffs, punishing breakdowns, and hardcore-style gang choruses, the group has a sound that's surprisingly infectious in what is typically a highly malevolent, take-no-prisoners genre. The band signed on with Sumerian Records, and in 2010 released its debut album, The World is Ours, on the influential metal label. Upon a Burning Body followed up with their sophomore effort, Red. White. Green., in 2012. The hard-charging, Will Putney-produced The World is My Enemy Now dropped in 2014, followed in 2016 by Straight From the Barrio, which featured the blistering single "Til the Break of Dawn." Now with Seek & Strike, the band strives forward delivering their most honest and crushing metal experience yet, Southern Hostility. No gimmicks, no hard sell, just straight up Texas style, American, metal.

Produced by Josh Schroeder (Lorna Shore, King 810, Tallah, Varials), Signs Of The Swarm's latest album—Amongst the Low & Empty (2023)—is so destructively deafening, it blew out Schroeder's subwoofer and left their manager in hysterics laughing out loud at its brutality. "We've always been a deathcore band," states Bobby Crow. "But this record is a lot MORE - it's got death metal, metalcore, djent, some industrial stuff...We wanted to make something that was just heavy." In the 1.5 years since its release, the Pittsburgh titans released a standalone single that took that to new heights. “IWONTLETYOUDIE” dropped in the midst of their monstrous “Decade of the Swarm Tour, ” celebrating, you guessed it, ten years of that very heavy—albeit in many mutations. It’s these ferocious fusions that have allowed them to play with acts like Lorna Shore, Thy Art Is Murder, Whitechapel, Cattle Decapitation, Carnifex and Archspire, rip European festivals between sold-out headline shows and more. The buzzing in your ear ain’t tinnitus—well, actually, it might be that too—it’s the Swarm.

Looking in a medical textbook will tell you the following: Vulvodynia is a chronic, severe vaginal pain with no identifiable cause. While the severe part is dead on, what a medical textbook won’t tell you is that Vulvodynia is also the pioneer in what is rapidly becoming Africa’s most eviscerating export: Slamming Brutal Death Metal. With lobotomizing, lurid riffs, skin-shredding blast beats and slams gruesome and filthy enough to induce septic shock, Vulvodynia are a lethal plague, spreading throughout the flesh of today’s heavy music scene—infecting one set of ears at a time, and leaving no survivors. Vulvodynia have toured Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand, and played numerous festivals worldwide alongside some of the biggest names in metal crowning themselves as the KINGS OF AFRICAN METAL. Duncan Bentley Vocals / Luke Haarhoff Guitar Kris Xenopoulos Guitar / Lwandile Prusent Guitar Chris Van Der Walt Bass / Thomas Hughes Drums

‘Opulence And Obsidian’ - OUT NOW 🕯️

HIVE is a progressive metal band based out of Chicago. They are known for harsh, unrelenting vocals accompanied by unorthodox rhythms, aggressive riffs, eerie atmospheres, and paralyzing grooves. HIVE continues to prove time and time again that they will live up to their reputation for delivering the darkest content imaginable.