Horrendous

Philadelphia's Horrendous fuse an uncompromising blend of grindcore with black, doom, thrash, and progressive death metal. Their first full-length, The Chills, appeared in 2012 and stayed grounded in classic death-metal traditions. Later releases such as Ecdysis in 2014 and Idol in 2018 shifted toward progressive structures, drawing parallels to the pioneering American death-metal band Death. On Ontological Mysterium, issued in 2023, the quartet balanced raw sonic force with intricate technical skill.

Damian Herring on guitar and vocals, drummer Jamie Knox, guitarist/vocalist Matt Knox, and bassist Alex Kulick formed the group in Philadelphia in 2009. United by a devotion to vintage old-school death metal, they issued the Sweet Blasphemies demo, which secured a contract with Dark Descent. The trad-death-metal-focused debut studio album The Chills followed in 2012, then came the more progressive Ecdysis in 2014 and Anareta in 2015; the latter appeared on numerous critics' year-end lists. For their fourth album, the punishing and widely praised Idol, Horrendous signed with Season of Mist in 2018. Ontological Mysterium from 2023 reunited the rapid-fire death metal of their debut with the intricate, neck-snapping command of their more recent work.