by: Rx Zenabi
Punerarya – Wala Nang Buhay Na Maaninag
Thresthold Records
Ultra brutal death goregrind Calabarzon murder suspects Punerarya offer their debut wreck-ording through the almighty Threshthold Records: Nine horrid and filthy grinding death chaos tracks made to butcher unsuspecting listeners and murder everyone upon impact.
Marred and slashed with ultra low vocal mayhem, and interlocked but blurred out drums, guitar, and bass with gory atmospheres, and scattered tagalog murder news samples strewn throughout, it’s a welcome glorious and brutal mess. The production is perfect, capturing the violent murder sprees with loud brutal playing, hacking away at your carcass and making sure you’re dead before you hit the ground.
Before you know it, the disc is done, and even if you’re already dead and splattered beyond recognition, you just have to reach for the play button again and absorb all the guts, blood, bone, brain, and all other human chunks and murderous intent anew for another addicting dose of well-done goregrind.
Homicidal Genocide – Demo 2024
Thresthold Records
Homicidal Genocide provides an appropriate, chaotic soundtrack for this doomed country in the form of 4 unrelenting black/death/harsh noise/power electronics detonations. The jagged, unmerciful fusion of these elements produces sinister, static-infected brutality, designed to wipe out cities and level everything to the ground. HG proves that power electronics and blackened industrial are a lethal short-circuited mayhemic combination that cauterizes everything in its path.
HG uses its sick death-black framework adorned with shattered frequencies and lethal shards of harsh noise and power electronics textures with nihilistic intent. This combination proves effective in creating hybrid death/black and harsh noise/power electronics violence. Press play and immediately self destruct via brutal power electronics execution.
Homicidal Genocide / Tawal Split
Anugal Audio Terror
This fitting split puts together two of the most notorious local death black power electronics extremists in one tape, sharing sides of total nihilist desecration. HG continues to wreck everything with blackened noise static frequencies with four initial attacks. Full-on blasting death black savagery charged with negative harsh noise frequencies and undead screams filtered through satanik electronics.
Not to be outdone, Tawal conclude the destruction rituals with blackened harsh noise rituals with a more experimental bent and extreme-sound-design aesthetic. The results are even more sinister and industrial in its effect, providing a fitting meditative end to this worthy split.
FFO of Konflict, Nyogthaeblisz, industrial noise, and chaos terrorism, this is right up your alley. Audio Terror lives up to its name by releasing high quality destructive recordings on kvlt cassettes. Still want more? Also check out HG’s EP for more doses of blackened power electronics violence.
Rabies – Time Paradox Meltdown (EP)
Anugal Audio Terror
The return of the mighty Rabies with this new EP further pushes their technical and songwriting skills into overdrive, and into post-nuclear detonation realms. Anugal’s deadly thrash anti-heroes combine their proven methods of breakneck speed, oddtime destruction, acidic vokills, and lethal shredding to good use, balancing out the equations with scalpel-precision thrash and deadly rhythms—with deadly results.
The title track clocks in at 9 plus minutes, their most ambitious and most intense progression to date, fusing proggy flourishes and classic techthrash influences brought forth for the post 2020s era. Epic tradeoff solos and shifting, frantic doomsday-race-to-the-end riffs abound here, in a mad scramble to escape this dimension before the earth is annihilated for good. An unlisted bonus track (cassette only) “Total Annihilation”, makes sure that if you haven’t been fully detonated by the end of the EP, then this one will.
Somehow, even with a playing time of more than 25 minutes, many including your humble scribe, are still left wanting more. If that is the case, a limited edition CD with 10 (!) bonus tracks is a mandatory purchase. Contact the band here for more details.
Government Alpha – Apophenia
Government Alpha/Linekraft
Xerxes
These latest masterworks of harsh noise from the Japanese OG, Government Alpha highlight his ever-increasing proficiency in the realm of extreme electronic experimental destruction. Apophenia, recorded in summer 2024 and winter 2025, are fresh new works, detailing earsplitting frequencies and sweeping harsh noise layers.
Gov’t Alpha’s exercises of extreme audio torture focuses on steady, streaming cacophonous punishment. It attacks the listener with various sound frequencies that never let up, electrocuting the audio landscape with continuous flowing noise, blips, drones, screeches, and barrages. The colorful paintings and art cards provide a contrast to the extremes found within with (welcome) torture: pure audial annihilation.
Merging the harsh noise aesthetics of Japanoise with stream of consciousness collections of electronic snippets and sound manipulations, GA creates dense and detailed mini epics that stretch to nine and ten minute territories. But you won’t seem to notice the time expansions as the ebb and flow remain engaging, and slightly hypnotic. It holds your attention while scrubbing out your eardrums.
The split with fellow Japanoise destroyer Linekraft continues these aural assaults, with slightly different angles of attacks. The deadly frequencies open the destruction rituals with a lethal combo of drones, industrial wreckage, decrepit public speech samples, pulverizing power electronics frequencies, and an underlying sense of dread in dissonant layers beneath.
GA ends this almighty split with more of his trademark harsh noise and electronic disintegration abuse, matching Linekraft’s intensity and destructive power: Streams of energetic, high-register noise, electronic washes of static in various frequencies, and abrasive mayhem in electronic form. Another very satisfying dose. As always, it carries beautiful painting cover art, which always serves as a great contrasting accompaniment to the electronic brutality of these Japanoise masters.
Dope Purple – Midnight Session
MoguMogu
Kozma Philo Liu – Kozma 2
Already mentioned elsewhere here in THC Zine, Taiwan’s psychedelic rock sorcerers Dope Purple offer another dose of their heavy, heady lysergic trips in this new CD, which also coincides with the release of “Children in the Darkness” a massive live recording from a Revolver concert back in 2023.
That said, Midnight Session is also a massive, late night live ritual of psychedelic rock free jazz fusion, perfectly capturing their prowess as a killer live band. These live jams showcase different sides of the band, from forlorn yet intense epics with tradeoff saxophone, synth, and lysergic lead guitars burning the audio landscape into the cosmic sunset, to heavy rock excursions and stoner doom territory, into DMT hell and back. Acid freakout solos, outer space exploration rhythms, extended head-high jams, and layers and layers of psychedelic heaviness envelop your brain.
Tying it all together is Kozma’s ethereal, reverberating, and otherwordly vocals. He perfectly complements the cosmic rock psychedelic madness of the band, propelling their jams into the far reaches of outer nether-dimensions. Then, they launch again into more freeform psyche-rock madness and you get lost further into the outer dimensions anew.
If you’re in Europe, at Belgium to be precise, make sure to catch Dope Purple in Desertfest 2025, along with Earthless, The Sword, Acid King, Jarboe/Thor Harris/Joy Von Spain, and more. They will also be doing other shows in the European regions. Bring some joints, take two tabs, experience their heavy trip, and then call me in the morning.
Elsewhere in the cosmos, Dope Purple frontman Kozma Philo Liu’s solo project is another worthy, toke out listen. It’s a much minimalist and meditative sound featuring deep heavy drones, lysergic dark ambient, and experimental noise, using his white guitar, knives, and metal tools with psychedelic sound alchemy to create zen dirge and drone ambience. You might even get lost and forget about time as an earthly constraint in its nearly 24 minute journey.
Kozma 2 is a sharp contrast against DP’s heavy and multi-layered epics. KPL’s second release overall is a perfect nightcap after Dope Purple’s midnight session releases for reflection and self hypnosis to achieve altered states of consciousness.
Towards Harmonious Civilization Zine 
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