✗ CLOSE
Unrivalled aural tumult featuring Thrall, Altars, Carcinoid and Ghostsmoker. Presented by Anthropocene Collapse, this showcase of top tier Naarm / Melbourne Death/Black/Doom is not to be missed!
THRALL Since 2006 Thrall have seamlessly melded black metal with doom, thrash, death metal and post-rock across Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. Thrall decimated audiences in several Australian cities in 2022-2023 to promote their long-awaited fourth album ‘Schisms’.
The new line-up includes members/ex-members of: Destruktor, Whitehorse, Förfalla, Slothferatu, Wood of Suicides and Extinct Exist. “It’s an inarguable fact that one of the best Australian black metal albums released last year (indeed, one of the best worldwide, depending on your tastes) was the ambitious Schisms by long-time blackhearts THRALL.
An album that we said in our interview with the band is “crafted with such a careful hand that it almost transcends being a mere ‘record’ and enters the realms of pristine art”, the project’s fourth full-length blend of searing black metal with ferociously deft thrash, wild-eyed foaming crust, post-rock sorcery and grievous doom left a clear and indelible mark on all who found themselves captive under its spell.
ALTARS With relentless compositions that are both dissonant and numbing, bludgeoning and meditative, alien but all-too-human, ALTARS deal in death metal beyond the norm while expelling a sense of severe frustration and fraying sanity.
On the back of a series of performances across the country in support of their sophomore album Ascetic Reflection, ALTARS return to Melbourne in June in preparation for an upcoming European tour and appearance at Copenhagen’s Kill-Town Death Fest.
CARCINOID Carcinoid deals in crushing death/doom straight from the graveyard. Dirty and dank, their churning sound goes straight for the throat like a rusted axe, puncturing souls along the way with otherworldly bellows. Their 2019 debut album ‘Metastatic Declination’ saw the band nominated for a Victoria music award before they went on to release a split Charnel Altar in 2020.
Last year they gained momentum with a run of Australian interstate shows and several shows in Europe, including Killtown Deathfest. 2023 will see the release of a new 5 track EP and currently the band is working on material for a second full length album.
GHOSTSMOKER Ghostsmoker’s brand of crushing blackened doom/sludge works on a simple ethos: worship the riff, hail yourself, and submit to the dread. Formed during Victoria’s 2021 lockdowns, Melbourne’s Ghostsmoker released their debut EP ‘Grief’ in June 2022 via Goatsound/Gamla Grind Records.
The EP received widespread acclaim for its crushing and dread-inducing take on the genre. Described as bleak, aggressive, and abrasive, the four-piece have quickly earned an incredible live reputation that's taken them to stages across the country, playing with some of the nation’s best heavy acts..
