Hulder’s darkness began to spread through the underground beginning in 2018 with the release of the Ascending the Raven Stone demo tape. A few more heavily traded and widely regarded cassette releases later, the band signed with Stygian Black Hand Records to release the first vinyl offering in the form of the EP, Embraced By Darkness Mysts…This solidified Hulder’s influence within the international metal scene but it wasn’t until the debut full length album, Godslastering: Hymns of a Forlorn Peasantry (Iron Bonehead Records), that both underground and more broad audiences were captivated by Hulder’s black metal craft. The long awaited first live performances took place in Olympia, Washington and New York City in the autumn of 2021. It was on the Winter Solstice of 2021 that a new partnership was announced with 20 Buck Spin Records, and plans for a new mini-album and second full length album were unveiled. The year 2022 will mark just the beginning of Hulder’s powerful live performances throughout the United States and, eventually, to lands beyond.

Out from the flaming kingdom of death arose STRESS ANGEL in 2020 with their eponymous debut demo. There, the NYC two-piece presented six songs of thrashing death metal that is classic without being retro, and uniquely dark and demented. An auspicious first start, no doubt, and almost effortlessly so.

Now, STRESS ANGEL strike with their full-length debut, Bursting Church. Ever aptly titled, Bursting Church is indeed an archaic monument literally bursting – with feral energy, unholy passion, and RIFFS! In one sense, STRESS ANGEL here up-ratchet all of the previous demo’s foremost characteristics – contorted riffery, pitiless battery, shrill screams, and frantic execution – and retain their still-new yet firmly-etched identity. But in another, perhaps-more-accurate sense, Bursting Church presents the duo in an altogether new light, where the classic metal elements underlining that identity are recast in more crazed and idiosyncratic colors: what’s old is new, and vice versa, and anything resembling the “familiar” is ripped asunder into the realm of foreign. It’s a record equally 2021 and 1987, if you will, and the finesse and charisma with which STRESS ANGEL charge through these 11 anti-anthems is utterly addicting. Whereas previous points of reference ranged Aura Noir to Autopsy, Sweden’s Damnation to Sweden’s Obscurity, Bursting Church reveals the band in rarefied, righteously rabid company, off on their own like nomads of the wasteland. No surrender, and no compromise!