February wrap-up 2026
Feat. Rob Zombie, Puscifer, Mayhem, Clawfinger, et al.
Alriiiiight, hereby carrying on with GMB's totally MASSIVE new feature: The monthly wrap-up.
Moving forth chronologically, those Karnivool dudes allegedly returned with new material after more than a decade or something. I never listened to them, because I always thought their name carried too many connotations of those kinda-hard-kinda-alternative, not-quite-nu-metal, but harder-than-regular-rock bands from around the turn of the century that may have been really amazing for about six weeks when they came out, but whose movement watered itself out so quickly that… Yeah, y'all know the story.
However, what I heard from their new LP "In Verses" sounded cool. Their sound is quite nice, but it's mysterious and reminiscent of fine groups like Tool and Deftones rather than being shined up for the jock segment. And speaking of Tool, there was also a new Puscifer album out. Living up to its title, "Normal Isn't" is quirky, weird, and ungratifying, but in any case, it's not hard enough to merit a review on GMB. Perhaps the new Converge LP was hard enough, but just like a lot of other outputs in its genre, it kinda went out the other ear pretty quickly. It wasn't as shitty as I remember them from that 2010 gig I witnessed, though, so maybe in another decade-and-a-half-ish?
In the extreme department, Mayhem released a new album. It's probably good within the black metal genre; Atilla's doing a lot of wicked vocal moves, and the mixing's even kinda warm – audible bass guitar and all. I just can't say a lot more about it than that – sorry. Also, Exhumed released a kinda concept album about traffic accidents, and while their rotten, old-school death metal is lovely, the whole record is crammed full of cringy interludes of band members reciting unfunny monologues as traffic cops, news announcers, and the like. Made me switch it off before halfway.
Remember Clawfinger? Yeah, they survived themselves. Their last studio album, 2007's "Life Will Kill You", was just as uninspired and creatively redundant as everything else they released in this millennium, and to nobody's surprise, the same thing goes for their newest effort. The opener is worth a spin for the video and lyrics, but otherwise, don't bother. And Sylosis released a bunch of neatly played and produced metalcore that I was able to listen to for the first five minutes until they introduced one of those wimpy pop melodies you'd find with pseudo-metal bands like Trivium and, sadly, latter-day Machine Head.
Finally, with "The Great Satan", Rob Zombie rejoined with Riggs and Blasko and released what I'd consider his best solo output since his '98 debut "Hellbilly Deluxe". Again, like with all of the above entries, I'm mentioning it in this here biddy feature 'cause I can't come up with enough relevant observations about it to merit an entire review. But if you like anything else outta the man, you'll be virtually guaranteed to dig this one as well.
And so it came to be that February 2026 only saw ONE goddamn review on here: The fine new album from KMFDM. This situation is not optimal by any standard, and perhaps it says something about where we're headed in terms of quality releases. But perhaps also something about GMB being under-staffed in terms of reviewers. If you'd like to give it a shot as a volunteer GMB reviewer, here's a neat little piece I wrote about that.
On a personal level, yours truly experienced one of my most massive cultural contrasts, travel-wise, when going from a luxurious all-inclusive week on a wonderful little Maldive to the messy poverty, smog, and invasive bottom-feeder culture of Sri Lanka. Both had some wonderfully tropical nature, climate, and snorkeling opportunities; the latter, however, I am not eager to revisit any year soon. But it's just as well, because as I said in my last video, I'm not gonna be traveling anytime soon anyway, except perhaps for a shorter business trip.
Apart from all this, stay tuned, 'cause March is already here, and it's got new releases lined up from Exodus, Black Label Society, Lamb Of God, Angus McSix, and Vreid, to mention a few. Gotta be something in there, dammit.