Cloak

Hailing from America’s Deep South, the extreme metal outfit Cloak coalesced in 2015 around a pummeling, riff-centric approach laced with gothic, sludge, doom, and the time-honored blackened Scandinavian death metal tradition.

Anchored in Atlanta, Georgia, the lineup consists of vocalist and guitarist Scott Taysom, guitarist Max Brigham, drummer Sean Bruneau, and bassist Billy Robinson. The band’s self-titled EP surfaced in 2016; its ferocious attack, echoing the sonic assault of Watain and Dissection, prompted Season of Mist to sign the group the next year. Their bruising debut album, To Venomous Depths, landed in 2017, followed by the inventive and incendiary sophomore effort Burning Dawn in late 2019.

For their third record, Cloak mined their own lineage, folding the raw power of Motörhead and the dark grooves of Danzig into their blackened death metal core. Issued in 2023, Black Flame Eternal captured the band’s full embrace of extreme metal’s unrestrained and defiant essence.