Khemmis

After eleven years of releasing albums and touring the world, Colorado’s Khemmis have
become a pillar of the modern metal scene.

“When we started this band, we had no expectations, no assumptions—we just wanted
to play heavy metal,” says guitarist/vocalist Ben Hutcherson. “The older I get, the more I
appreciate how rare it is in life to have relationships that last this long and offer a sense of
stability and reassurance in a world that increasingly is horrifying and unsuitable for human life.
And so, in many ways, this band is a home.”

Some artists strive for a legacy; Khemmis felt born with one. Upon releasing their 2015
debut Absolution, the Denver-based four-piece felt like old souls whose towering, spiritual doom
metal connected with metalheads the world over. This was further cemented by 2016’s Hunted,
which won the band international acclaim and was declared Album Of The Year by Decibel.
2018’s rollicking Desolation, 2020’s devotional Doomed Heavy Metal MLP (featuring a fan-
favorite cover of Dio’s “Rainbow In the Dark”) and 2021’s searing Deceiver only reinforced the
band’s monolithic sound and diehard following.

It makes sense, then, that the Khemmis behind Khemmis–—Hutcherson, fellow
vocalist/guitarist Phil Pendergast, drummer Zach Coleman, and newly-appointed bassist David
Small—is different in many ways. While the band has often felt synonymous with the Denver
metal scene, Pendergast and Coleman have since moved away to Washington and North
Carolina respectively.

And yet, Khemmis today feel more like the band they’ve always wanted to be than ever
before. They believe not only in the power of the music they’re making, but their bandmates’
ability to make it with them.

“We have so much trust in each other,” says Pendergast. “Me and Zach moving away, in
some ways, actually strengthened that, cause it’s kind of proven to ourselves that when we get
back together, we can trust each other to do what we need to do. We’ve been able to reconnect
to that sense of just how badass it is that we get to even do this.”

Necrofier

NECROFIER are rewriting the rulebook in their own blood. Since 2018, the quartet has applied a spicy Texan intensity to the icy atmospheres of mid-’90s Norway, and Transcend Into Oblivion deploys their modus operandi with more power, conviction, and ingenuity than ever before. Here NECROFIER crafts a modern classic of the form, where tempestuous squalls of extremity are punctuated by sinister, melancholic, otherworldly melodies, twinkling in the gloom like will-o’-the-wisps on a black night.

Wretched

With Decay, the decade-long wait for new Wretched music is finally over, the dozen songs worth every moment of anticipation. The first LP since 2014’s Cannibal, Decay sees the boundary-pushing lineup breaking past defined walls of their four previous releases. “We’ve had a lot of time to grow and reflect in the time between our last album our Decay,” says drummer Marshall Wieczorek. “Wretched is doing what Wretched always does, and that’s exploring our environment and leaving room for ourselves to try different things. To sum things up, the new album is DYNAMIC. We go here, we go there, we go everywhere. There is no shortage of groove, heaviness, speed, melodicism, prettiness, and sadness.”

For the last two years, Charlotte, North Carolina’s lauded metal monsters worked on the songs that would populate Decay. The result is a conceptual masterpiece that blends haunting melodies with progressive complexity. This fifth album, which is a prequel to 2010’s Beyond the Gate, delves into existential themes, D&D-inspired mythology, and personal loss.

“Decay is 100% a concept album,” confirms vocalist Billy Powers. “Beyond the Gate had an element this record shares, the talisman. I always knew there was more story there and was very excited to join up with the guys again to put that in motion. The first track I wrote was “The Golden Tide.” I had no idea where I was going to take story in connection to BTG until I typed the first line of the song. ‘They began in the dark.’ After that, the lyrics poured out of my mind and by the end of it I realized that this story takes place many years before the content of BTG.”

The LP’s title track (and first single) contains the album’s main character, Malus, along with a character from BTG named Elturiel, a djinn bound to any creation to come from Xzorian. “In the song, ‘decay’ refers to Malus’ decaying existence, the feeling of loss, and helplessness/lack of control he has to influence anything outside of the darkness in which he has been cast.”

In broader terms, decay refers to many elements of the album’s story: “The decay of good intention, the loss of loved ones, the influence time and choices has upon our bodies and minds and the decay of the world around us due to the choices of those with ultimate power.” Powers found that he’d also subconsciously written certain lines reflecting personal experiences of loss and deception, often influenced by writerly favorites including JRR Tolkien and Michael Crichton as well as countless comic book creators, such as Robert Kirkman and Jonathan Hickman. Decay world even sees Power using Latin words/phrases in the lyrics to “show that in this story languages can span across an incredible amount of time, space, even crossing dimensions.”

If this sounds heady, Wretched are glad to expand and explain for fans, with Decay’s liner notes offering a more fully realized journey. “The story tells you everything you need to know about what happens before and after each song, so the listener can choose to listen to the album again in story order to gain the full story experience of the album,” Wretched explain.

The music “contributes to the story and helps paint an image, in the same way music and movies go together,” Wieczorek furthers. To that end, the visually evocative “Radiance” is Decay’s second single, described by guitarist Steven Funderburk as a “solid head-banging ripper of a song that has heavy groove riffing as well as a very mournful yet epic melody on the back half, which is something we’re known for doing.”

Sonically, Decay may be Wretched’s most pristine-sounding recording, but it’s still raw with a live feeling in the performances. The band didn’t track the parts until they sounded like a computer. You hear Steven pick through the strings and fret the instrument, Andrew shines on bass with a potent musicality and movement, his parts as much a part of the sound and structure of the songs as the guitar. Vocally, Powers went as raw as humanly possible, pushing himself and the instrumentals to their furthest for an uncompromisingly powerful performance on every track.

The twelfth and final song on Decay is “Golden Skyway,” which is a bit of a wildcard, rife with uplifting energy. Funderburk is drawn to guitar-driven melody from bands like Iron Maiden and Dissection, and that approach is used on “Golden Skyway.” I’ve wanted to do the key change / modulation move on every record, but it just didn’t work out for whatever reason,” he recalls. “But ‘Golden Skyway’ finally opened that door for us. I’m a huge fan of the 80’s in general and that was a stamp all over music from that era so it was rad finally doing that.” ‘Golden Skyway’ felt like the proper final track with its triumphant-sounding melody and groove giving listeners an uplifting end to an often-dark musical journey.

When Wretched emerged from North Carolina, in 2005 as a formidable force on the metal scene, their blending of melodic, death, technical and progressive metal captured ears immediately. With their 2025 debut album on Metal Blade, the band is officially back in full force with a tidal wave of music to lift up both old and new fans. “The world is such a wild place that can be hard to navigate. Many people have so many hardships in life. I wanted to create an escape for the listener with the hopes that they will be entertained, get lost in the music/lyrics and forget about everything else going on, if just for a little while.”