THE DEVIL'S MONTH: July 2026

Yeah, it’s a tough month to try to be all cultural and stuff. Most of you are either parking your bums at the beach/mountain/river doing fuck all or at some overcrowded summer festival, or at least heavily wishing you were while the drudge of daily life grinds you down but with higher temperatures. All in all, not environments typically suitable for paying attention to nerds going like “here is a two-hour avant-garde record I think you should listen to when you’re done with the Bulgarian folk I just put on” from behind their turntables. Hell, even our Andy is out and about doing his rock star shit like wrapping up Therapy? records and traveling to remote, vastly unknown territories such as Germany, Belgium or Finland to play before tens of thousands of people (I mean, ser-iou-sly!), but even in the middle of all that he still found time to get us a little wrap up of everything he’s been obsessively listening to on the move, in between the adoring roars of fan armies. ‘Cause it’s all we can do, isn’t it? Among the rising heat, the wars and all the daily shit, our undying love for a burning world (ahem) remains, our records keep turning (and Mondo Negro is always open for you to get more), and we soldier on. Thank you for marching alongside us as always. Onwards!

Coffin Hunters
Cosmic Dawn
(Bitter End Records)

Coffin Hunters’ first two albums, 2019’s ‘The Fire Knight’ and 2022’s ‘Wake The Dead’, were already pretty cool, in a retro, NWOBHM kind of way with a few added (and tasteful) ‘70s touches, the perfect kind of band for all the grumpy dudes complaining no one does heavy metal like they used to anymore. Fast forward a few years and Coffin Hunters are now back, and this time they’ve thrown one more genre into their old-school metallic fire, namely prog. It’s prog, but in the way that a metal band does it, if you know what I mean - immediately bringing stuff like Uriah Heep or Queensrÿche to mind, all of it covered with a bit of Blue Öyster Cult flair. The trick with this kind of stuff is the balance - get too widdly and you lose the fist-raising power your Maiden bits should have, get too metal and the prog bits will just feel like meaningless fluff. Just ask Hällas, for instance (who are probably the closest contemporary reference point for Coffin Hunters), whose career across four albums hasn’t been exactly consistent, alternating truly amazing stuff with slightly more uninspired moments. Fortunately, and while a few more catchy hooks (especially in vocal terms) wouldn’t hurt, these Californian dudes get it abundantly right throughout ‘Cosmic Dawn’, providing an exhilarating listen almost from start to finish, even when they slow down fot a little bit of balladry like on ‘Last Nail In The Coffin’, for instance. If you own any records by any of the old bands mentioned here, dive safely into this. And if not, oh boy, do you have some catching up to do.

Pylar
Delyrio
(Cyclic Law)

Having followed Pylar closely - and we have, even featuring their previous albums ‘Abysmos’ and ‘Límyte’ in our year-end lists - over the course of a long and fertile discography, it has felt like watching an alien body corrode and decay, each time reduced to its more fundamental parts and yet maintaining its grotesque, can’t-look-away kind of appeal. This contextualisation and placement of ‘Delyrio’ into a larger perspective is important, because its description will make it sound like it’s not that much different from the band’s previous work. Cosmic horror, deconstruction of metal, tenebrous drone/doom, a constant feeling of brooding menace, of something not quite right, of insects crawling over your spine from the inside. We’ve hacked our way through all that at each gruesome piece the Spanish band has thrown at us, and yet, each time it feels like something new, like a fresh reason to be terrified all over again, and each time it also feels more unlikely that it’s doing that, because apparently they are shedding things from their sound, not adding. Repeated listens might bring forth a certain structure behind the various layers of sound that make up this unpredictable cacophony, but understanding it more doesn’t mean it gets more comfortable. The band’s bio mentions “echoes of Swans, Oranssi Pazuzu and Teitanblood,” and I wouldn’t disagree with any of those (especially Pazuzu), but to me it the closest thing in spirit to this would be Portal. Or more specifically, a Portal that has given up. No blastbeats, no surges, just a long and drawn out fearful recognition that the horrors are just too immense to even try to fight.

Lockstep
I Know What I Saw
(Profound Lore)

When Nothing first appeared, a lot of (mainly) old-school shoegazers maligned them, branding them just a “modern” rendition of that sound mostly developed through the ‘90s, but with hindsight, after all the bands that have popped up since within the same ballpark, it’s clear they were the main instigator of the next chapter of shoegaze. A darker, fuller, heavier kind of approach, more metallic even, I dare say, that has itself been mutating with each new practitioner. Enter Nashville’s Lockstep then, another great example of that expanding crowd, with their morose and dense trawl through misery on this, their debut album. The dynamics are similar to most shoegaze you’ve heard, the floating vocals are just as forgetful (and let’s be honest, they could use a bit of distinction), but man, when those ethereal power chords land, it’s like being hit with a hammer in the middle of a flying dream. As much ‘Loveless’ as ‘Guilty Of Everything’, Lockstep sound both old and new at the same time, but you’ll never have too much time to think about it - though the overal dynamics ensure there’s plenty of actually gazing-at-them-shoes moments, you know someone will stomp on that distortion pedal soon, a chunky bassline will pop up, and away we go into the clouds - the dark, rain-heavy, menacing clouds, but clouds nonetheless. Obviously not the most original or innovative of bands, but still Lockstep do enough thing their own way on ‘I Know What I Saw’ to not sound like just a scene product either. Give them a spin.

Parts & Labor
Set Of All Sets
(Ernest Jenning Record Co.)

It’s a brave thing, to disappear for fifteen years and then come back with a massive two-hour record (a “double album”, if that still means anything to you streaming kids *screams at clouds a little more*), but then again, Parts & Labor were never anything if not a corageous bunch. Always putting the “noise” in noise rock, the five albums they put out during their first incarnation, from 2003 to 2011, were so wildly free and adventurous that you could throw comparisons as diverse as Lightning Bolt, Hüsker Dü, Melt-Banana, LCD Soundsystem or even Boredoms at them, and they all would make some kind of sense. Well, I’m happy to report that those fifteen years out in the wilderness haven’t done anything to tame them. In fact, their crazy all-over-the-placeness seems to have just refined. For instance, if you look at the photo up there, you’ll see four dudes, and yeah, they did upgrade from a trio to a quartet halfway through their first cycle, but this is a substantially different and much more uncommon formation - when they reunited, they did so with both of their last drummers, Christopher Weingarten (who had played with them from 2004 to 2008) and Joe Wong (2008 to 2012, when they split up). If I’m mentioning it, you’ve surely realised it’s not a gimmick, and it really isn’t - the furious dynamics of the percussion are up there with any other (rare, to be honest) occasion when two drummers were actually justified, like the Melvins or Kylesa when they went through those periods, for instance. As relentless as these two hours can be, with their boundless, inexhaustible energy, the screechy over-the-top parts and ridiculous technicolour diversity, enough to warrant a pause or two halfway in even the most enthusiastic of listeners, ‘Set Of All Sets’ also comes across often as a pop album above most things. The choruses and the verses are super catchy, the songs often bounce along in a much more listenable way than you might expect, and you’ll find yourself happily bopping along to most of it, as well as kicking and jumping and yeah, scratching your head too. Ultimately, once you get to grips with it after a few listens, it dawns on you that even in 2026, it’s still possible to make two-hour records with very little in the way of throwaway material or stuff that you think should have been edited. Parts & Labor really have all of these things to say, and I suspect still so much more in store.

Semantron
Secrets Of A Krummholz Heart
(self-released)

If you know Dave French, it’s no surprise this solo venture of his is so captivating. Aside from drumming for YOB currently, he also plays with Steve Von Till and has been in Brothers Of The Sonic Cloth with the legendary Tad Doyle (who actually mastered this album right here), so the man’s pedigree is clearly spotless. Still, ‘Secrets Of A Krummholz Heart’ (“krummholz” being stunted, crooked trees found in some environments which nevertheless still surive strongly - so the intended analogy is pretty clear) inevitably lands as a surprise, for the depth that it carries in its unusual approach. Having rented a cabin at the foot of Mount Adams in Washington State, Dave recorded the essential acoustic parts of these songs while fully entwined with the nature around him, even including that very nature in the sounds themselves that adorn the compositions. Sometimes, when done in a lesser way, “field recordings” used this way are little more than funny little details, small touches in songs that might not necessarily need them, but here they really become not just part of the song, but almost the song itself. As you hear birds, the gust of wind, flowing rivers, and even percussion made from stone and tree, you will truly feel enveloped by the atmosphere these pieces were created from. As far as recent releases go, sometimes this reminds me of when Menace Ruine did a similar thing for companion release to ‘Nekyia’, under the name Ghost Heartbeats. The electric instruments, drums and vocals later added in Dave’s home studio were done so in a way that doesn’t ruin that fundamental core, and so ‘Secrets…’ remains a profoundly evocative listen that will truly transport you to its origins if you let yourself go with it.

Steve Austin
The Magnolia Sessions
(Anti-Corp Music)

You might have seen a few volumes of The Magnolia Sessions around before, as several really cool artists have been participating in the series over the last few years. Created by Dan Emery of the Anti-Corp record label, they are basically a series a live performances, recorded outside in single takes with no overdubs, underneath a large magnolia (hence the name) tree in Nashville, Tennessee. Given the characteristics of the format, it’s naturally become a wonderful new habitat for several purveyors of folk, Americana and alternative country to give us some rawer, even truer, I’d venture, versions of their songs we know and love. Perhaps earlier than we might have expected, since the first album of his long-awaited outlaw country project just came out on May 1st, it’s now the turn of the great Steve Austin (of Today Is The Day, of course) to sit under the magnolia with his acoustic guitar, and the results are as wonderful as you might imagine. We haven’t included ‘Marked Cards And Loaded Dice’ in our May roundup simply because we had talked about it a bunch already (not only did we have the big man himself on our podcast talking about it when it came out, but we had already run a hefty preview of it when it was first announced), but it seems right to signal this release now, as it feels like a great complement to the album. Featuring almost all of the songs originally on it (only ‘Oh Lord I’m Comin’ Home’, ‘Lovin’ To Do’ plus closing instrumental ‘Chestnut Mound’ are missing), it also adds, crucially, three of Steve’s biggest inspirations in the form of three cover songs he frequently plays live. Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Waiting Around To Die’, The Delmore Brothers’ ‘Blues Stay Away From Me’ and David Allan Coe’s ‘I Still Sing The Old Songs’ are all given the Steve+magnolia treatment, and the crossing of their original, legendary emotional weight with Steve’s own approach and this particularly raw and unfiltered setting really turns into something quite extraordinary and it’s great to finally have a recorded version of these interpretations. Even Steve’s own songs, and this is most emphatically not implying that the recording and production on his “proper” album wasn’t anything short of perfect, also gain a new dimension from being performed in this way. Just like every other kind of music he makes, there is an inherent rawness to it that really shines here. Oh, and if you’re just discovering The Magnolia Sessions, while you’re at it, Hannah Juanita’s was released the same day as Steve’s, and I’d heartily recommend also checking it out.

Цар Стангра (Tsar Stangra)
Химните На Разрушените Светове (Hymns Of The Broken Worlds)
(GlobMetal Productions)

Okay, hear me out - I know a bunch of you will immediately flee in the opposite direction at the mere mention of folk/pagan metal or just by glancing at a band that looks like Цар Стангра do in the photo up there. I myself, while perhaps sporting an ever so slightly bigger tolerance for such things as the average TDM reader, do groan frequently at, like, Iberian people pretending to be Vikings or whatever. Anyway, in this particular case, I’d advise you to hang around for just a little more and give these guys a chance, because this is the real deal. And you know what, there’s a good lesson to be learned here, because as it happens, these people are living proof that it doesn’t take much for a band to cross the line from silly cultural appropriation gimmick costume metal to what “folk metal” should actually mean. They aren’t doing anything incredibly new or “avant-garde” or super complicated. They’re just writing good music, from the heart, inspired by their own traditions and folklore (the band is based in Quebec, truth be told, but the main guy, Stanislav Stefanovski, is Bulgarian), while not letting the aesthetics of it overpower proper songwriting and genuine passion for the music. That’s it. While featuring indeed elements like tambura, throat singing and ceremonial choirs, and the musical structures and melodies being clearly informed by Bulgarian folklore, it still comes across as very much a metal album, particularly a black metal album. It will inspire comparison with Negură Bunget, Bal-Sagoth or even Rotting Christ, rather than any Dead Can Dance-gone-widdly-metal hack job like most of these things usually do. It feels rather freeing, actually - without trying to be all dancey-dancey, or thinking about how the crowds at Wacken would jump to it, drinking horns in hand, they are able to write something like ‘Завръщането на родния бог’ (‘The Return Of The Native God’), a proper rousing and inspiring anthem that will make you feel like calling upon Тангра as if ancient Bulgarian blood suddenly started coursing through your veins.

Well, I’m out and about the band after being in the studio for a month. We’re taking in Germany, Finland and Belgium and will be away for a week. I’ve taken a ton of sounds with me as well as podcasts about politics, football and Samuel Beckett.

Among the constant listening while on the move, I’ve got the following albums on repeat:

Dead Pioneers - Wagon Burner (Hassle Records)

Deafkids - Cicatrizes Do Futuro (Neurot Recordings)

L.O.T.I.O.N. - Machine Hallucinations (Static ShockRecords)

MAQUINA. - Body Transmission (Fuzz Club)

Prisonnier Du Temps - Prendre Le Pouvoir Par La Force (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)

Wayne Adams - Absorb (Wrong Speed Records)

As well as tracks by:
Employed To Serve - A Moment Gone Too Soon (Church Road Records)
Actors - Youth (Artoffact Records)
Chalk - Get Fucked (Alter Music)
femtanyl - BODY THE PISTOL (entitii records) (from the album ‘Man Bites Dog’)

MAQUINA. and Deafkids keep up the mood and the momentum with body moving hypnotism and lysergic head food, the punk and metal bangers from L.O.T.I.O.N., Dead Pioneers, Employed To Serve, Femtanyl and Prisonnier Du Temps galvanise the daily commutes and the wonderful new releases from Wayne Adams and Actors serve the late evening winding down period.

Having seen Chalk play a thrilling set recently in London, I’ve got their latest on the list for those early morning wake up calls. Next month I’ll have a more detailed track-by-track breakdown of other listening pleasures.

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