Heavy Duty – August 2026
Written by – Gareth Endean-Pitt
It’s been a blistering summer in the UK and the underground metal scene has more than matched it with it’s releases. So much so that there’s no way I could fit in reviews for all the great UK bands that have put material out in the last month. However, before we dive in to the reviews a couple of honourable mentions are needed. Both Pit of Dicks and The Salt Pale Collective have released noteworthy albums in the last month. One is a caustic mix of sludge, grind and noise that blasts in and out in 15 minutes of pure filth, the other is a slab of expansive post metal that sways between full on rage and melodic beauty. And if you can’t guess which is which by the band names alone then we might have to revoke your metal licence and all the privileges that come with it.
Finally a brief mention for the new album by Fen, whose near 20-year career and 17,000 monthly listeners on Spotify renders them out of the scope for this feature. It is an elegant, mature and yet still aggressive and powerful atmospheric black metal masterpiece and deserves your attention. But obviously as it doesn’t fit the Heavy Duty remit we couldn’t possibly review it…
Anyway having had our cake and eaten it, let’s crack on with the August round up:
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Cairiss – Wilderness
Released: 31 July 2026
If the streaming numbers are anything to go by then Cairiss may also have outstripped this column’s underground remit despite this being the band’s debut album, albeit one that has been a long time in the making. It’s been a long 10 years since they released their first single but it has been time well spent. Having honed both their sound and their line up, Cairiss have produced an album that is polished, fully realised and primed for success.
Wilderness sits somewhere on the blackgaze/post-black spectrum with a twin vocal attack from Freya Brown and Lydia Williams that fluctuates between pure, chorister cleans to incandescent blackened screams, creating a sound that would be equally at home in a cathedral as it would a crypt. Musically too, they drift elegantly and effortlessly between ethereal beauty to blastbeat onslaughts, but it is the lead guitar work that often sets their songs apart from the pack, the solos are stylistically varied and add an additional layer to each track, providing both compliment and counterpoint to the music around them.
Occasionally, as is often the case with blackgaze, the songs drift a little and the high gloss production tempers the cathartic rage, but when they get the blend right, such as on the phenomenal Disassociate or the wonderful album closer Wildfire it is nigh on flawless. In truth it feels somewhat churlish to even mention the imperfections as they are few and far between, and it is rare enough to find a British band who sound so immediately ready for the world stage let alone one you genuinely feel could fulfil that promise. I highly doubt this is the last we’ll hear of Cairiss, but on their current trajectory it’s unlikely they’ll be featuring in humble round ups of the underground scene for much longer.
Bleeding Antlers – Songs of Praise
Released: 22 August 2026
It feels like a long time since Bleeding Antlers‘ debut album, Stagmata, pierced through 2021’s Covid-ridden gloom with its tongue in cheek doom shanties and hooved animal obsession. Back then, despite the quality of the music, there was a hint of novelty about them that some may have found off-putting. Their excellent, deadpan cover of Pony perhaps overshadowing the fine work on offer across the rest of the record.
Songs of Praise is a noticeably more serious offering, rooted in a traditional doom metal sound, bathed in pagan folklore and sinister, dark storytelling. It becomes quickly apparent; this is not the party doom of old. They still sound like Green Lung’s sleazier older cousin – the one who taught them how to smoke and introduced them to their first Ouija board – but everything feels far more streamlined and focused. They even repeat the trick of covering a pop song – Lana Del Rey’s Blue Jeans – but this time round it is done with a straight face and an obvious respect for the source material.
It is on their own original songs that they truly shine though. The vocals weave between Peter Steele lows, falsetto highs and malevolent sneers, the riffs are monumental and the drums punctuate the songs with powerful precision. The hooks are insidious, burrowing into your brain before you’ve even recognised they exist. There is variety too, The Ghost of Oliver Reed has a dark folk vibe, Fimbulwinter flirts with Alice in Chains style grunge and Black Album riffing, there are even hints of glam rock that bring to mind Marc Bolan’s vocal delivery – think Mechanical Animals era Manson without the craven Bowie worship – and it’s all wrapped up nicely in a pitch black gothic bow.
Ultimately, while it perhaps lacks the immediacy of it’s predecessor, Songs of Praise is a dark and brooding gem that shows a band finding their true sound and executing it with a cocksure swagger. Any hint notion of novelty is gone, Bleeding Antlers have forged something that is built to last.
Flamebearer – Igniter
Released: 7 August 2026
When they burst onto the scene with debut album Brazen back in 2024 it was clear Flamebearer weren’t afraid to chuck whatever influences they saw fit into their music to see what sticks. There were hints of doom, traditional metal, grunge and groove in the mix. While the approach is similar on follow up album Igniter, this time they lean into a more raw and punk-influenced sound with gang vocals aplenty, although you’re still never far from a good old-fashioned chunky metal riff. The doom element is still there, although it’s of the more classic rock variety a la Trouble or Pentagram than the more modern darker doom sound. And while the songs are still propelled by a Clutch-like rhythm section, as a whole it feels a little less metal and a little more hard rock than before.
For the most part Igniter feels like it’s geared to the live environment, which by all accounts is where the band shine. They leap out of the blocks with full-blooded banger Electric Haze, all foot-on-monitor stomp and sing along choruses, and then they repeat the trick on Falling Down, and then they repeat it again. And again. Individually the songs are all solid but together it becomes a little too samey through the middle section of the record but then, just when you think you’ve got them pinned down, they mix it up on Burning Soul which has the sludgy feel of early Baroness or – if anyone remembers them – short lived Mastodon/Tool supergroup, Legend of the Seagullmen. Things get even weirder then on the grinding, doomy album closer Whispering Winds; sinister, almost psychedelic and thoroughly engaging, it feels absolutely nothing like anything that’s come before and highlights that while Flamebearer’s big, balls out rock and roll is perfectly decent in its own right it’s the other strings to their bow that highlight just how good they could be.
Xenith – To No Avail
Released: 28 August 2026
The melodic death metal scene in the UK has never quite caught on in the way it has across the rest of northern Europe, aside from Carcass in the very early days of the scene we’ve had very few bands to rival the best of Scandinavia. And so along come Xenith to try and change all that.
By and large, To No Avail is a very worthy attempt from a young and hungry band with no small amount of talent to back it up with. They wear their At The Gates influence prominently on their sleeve, combining thrashy guitars, melodic leads and economical, accessible songwriting. There are big, hooky choruses and a never-ending supply of headbang-inducing riffs. It is, in fact, a textbook example of melodic death metal, done very well.
What it isn’t, is startlingly original. Which isn’t necessarily a problem, if you like melodeath then you’ll have absolutely no complaints. But while they stick out in the UK scene, globally the market is somewhat saturated by bands doing this exact thing and Xenith may find it more difficult to stand out from the pack. What is undeniable though is that they do have the songs. The opening barrage of Take Me Back Where I Belong and Alone is up there with anything else in the genre, and the quality can be found throughout, Incite The Tragedy, Killer Instinct and The Weight To Pretend all sound ready made to bring carnage to mosh pits across the world. And on the more progressive, experimental Out Of Contempt it shows that Xenith are more than mere melodeath-by-numbers. If they can maintain the songwriting quality and expand on their sound, there is no reason they can’t be mixing it with the big boys for a long time to come.
To hear all these bands and more, check out our British Underground Metal playlist here:
