(From Below)

It’s been a while since I’ve been this excited over a new metal EP. But this is a band I’ve been in contact with for a while now, and knowing just how good their music is, plus how fantastic their lead single to this album was ‘Rectification’, I had my hopes up high for this one, and I’m proud to say not only did it live up to my expectations but blew it out of the water! Let’s talk about it!

So, this EP contains 5 tracks: 

-Rectification 

-Then You Die

-From Below

-Guardian

-Edge of Sanity

And this EP sounds like a time machine back to the golden 80’s era of metal. This feels like a love letter to bands such as: 

-Anthrax

-White Snake

-Judas Priest

-Iron Maiden, and more. What they seem to accomplish in just 5 songs is just astonishing to me as they not only encapsulate the aura of the metal forefathers but put their own original modern spin on it to truly make it their own version and sound.

Across these tracks, you can expect fast-paced anthem tracks like track 1 and 3 but also harmonious slow burners such as track 2 and 4. If you know your metal, you know the bands I mentioned above all sound different from one another with their own unique tempos and styles, and yet this EP seems to capture each part perfectly!

The guitar work is shredding and technical; the drums are hard-pressed and rhythmic in motion; it almost makes me think of Led Zeppelin’s ‘John Bonham’ would sound like in the modern day, and I would assume like this!

The vocal excellence across this project is unmatched. It’s one thing to instrumentally sound like the 80’s but to capture the vocals as well? It’s rare and definitely not easy to pull off, yet this band even does that right. From where I first discovered them to now, they have evolved 10x fold, and it makes me so happy to know they are where they are!

This EP could very well be the metal EP of 2025. It’s infectious, head-banging worthy, and beautifully crafted. This band, in this short spur of momentum, shows bands and fans alike why they aren’t the band to sleep on anymore! 

https://open.spotify.com/album/1nQPsck7qj0a3MRke2J3WS?si=GsGBfZbgRie-H4C84C58Pg

(Hell Of A Life)

2WO OFFISHALL is back! I last covered his single ‘Realest Ever’ featuring Cyphersick and Vic Spencer, but now he’s returned with a past collaborator and one new for what could easily be a single of May!

So, this new track features returning Cyphersick and now Brother Tom Sos! And with this new duo, we have three minutes and 12 seconds of dope music you guys have to try out!

This beat, similar to the former single, features these luscious chord progressions with heavy bass over a traditional hip-hop beat! The type you could easily play on the radios, clubs, and streaming playlists! This is the kind of beat you could play on repeat and never get sick of it! It’s vibrant, rich, larger than life, and infectious in execution! 

As far as the rhyming goes. Both men involved have introspective and original verses filled with sharp/personal lyricism, strong pen game, and smooth and fluent flow. They both feature different levels of gears, one more methodical, the other a bit faster-paced, but in turn, they both fill the others’ gaps and act as each other’s yin and yang or being different sides of the same coin! 

I love the chemistry they have together; they both understood the assignment of turning this wonderful instrumental into a killer overall track, and their two verses plus that catchy/memorable chorus make this a track I’m sure will be on everyone’s mind for months to come!

Make sure you don’t miss this new single! 2WO OFFISHALL doesn’t know how to miss! 

https://open.spotify.com/track/3kkeOJuAZOyR9Gw2M24EQm?si=HJHKOk2nTs-WlpaAIMNhVw

(BYAKUGAN)

First of all, what a dope concept to rap about! For those who don’t watch anime, it’s regarding a power from the anime ‘Naruto’, the ‘BYAKUGAN’, and I never would have picked Estee as an anime fan, but it just makes this record that much better!

We have another dope collaboration between legendary underground MC Estee Nack and his regular producer in crime, ‘Mr Rose’. Together, they have shifted the phase of underground hip hop and what it should sound like! Along with Al, these three men have done more for the culture than anyone could possibly know, and now Estee and Rose are back to dominate the game for what feels like the 100th time! 

The features include: 

-Starker

-El Seven

-Ice Lord

And just like a lot of his other albums, this one has that smooth, jazzy, and light tone that other producers Estee worked with, and that’s what makes his signature style so memorable.

He makes surreal and beautiful-sounding instrumentals that give off a colourful and engaging experience (similar to what you might hear on a Tribe Called Quest) album in how vibrant and electrifying the production was and how it went through your whole body and made you feel a certain way!

Mr Rose has this effect with everything he drops! His work is often methodical in pacing yet expressive and explosive in the final product. The strings, chords, and notes feel richer, they feel heavier, and more saturated in love and passion to the point you can feel the emotions that went into making these beats. Although Estee is more commonly known for his extreme musical ventures and sounds, you best believe he can just as well pop on a record of this influence!

Speaking of the man in question, I’m genuinely curious if we will ever hear a wack verse from him because the world hasn’t heard one yet, and it didn’t start here! 

What we have here is Estee using his creative genius and his natural charisma to glide over these beats and provide social, ghetto, and personal commentary in his own unique free-form rap style that makes each verse from him more memorable than 10x other MC’s combined. I loved how towards the end of the album he does sample an episode of ‘Naruto’, which I loved, plus the use of voice samples about ‘Elijah Muhammad’ definitely hit hard and gave this record a level of substance it may have lacked before!

Only three features to work with, these four men help elevate the project to a higher level with ruthless execution, tough bars, and excellent flows! Estee always knows how to pick the best features for his records, and this record is no different!

Another unsurprisingly dope release by Estee and Mr. Rose. They were the ones who changed the landscape, and they are the ones continuing the quality of the culture! 

https://esteenack.bandcamp.com/album/byakugan

(SideA)

Looks like we have Here’s Johnny going muddy on this track! With so many experimental productions I’ve experienced with this flood of singles, this one has to be the grimiest I’ve heard yet! 

We have the latest single by Here’s Johnny back with frequent collaborator ‘LordMixer’, and with a track that’s once again under two minutes, we have a quick yet fire track to give you that shot of adrenaline through the day!

So, as mentioned above, this track features the most trademark Boom Bap Grime/Muddy track we’ve heard from him (at least as these new singles are concerned), and it sounds fantastically hard!

You’ve got those long screeching note loops across that head-bumping boom beat that acts as its skeleton for this ruthless track! This is the kind of song you’d listen to in your headphones right before you go to rob someone! When you have hate in your heart and ready to fuck someone up! That Griselda type shit! As someone who loves these kinds of beats, this is right up my alley!

And you already know if a beat is already this grimy, then best believe Johnny will amplify that 10x fold and use his loud, brash, and powerful vocal tones to turn the beat from loud to gargantuan! And he does exactly that as usual; there’s no pause in his style, no break in his rhythm, just straight bars, sharp and lethal lyricism with that signature infectious punchlines and poisonous wordplay, and across this beat, he proves why he should never be left out of the conversation in the underground!

One of my more favourite singles of his, and glad to see him on that grimy shit! 

https://youtu.be/dI17i6iK4lk?si=A7xHKoIWaOrXqyam

(The River Styx)

I’ll keep it real with you all, compilation albums with tons of features and different producers aren’t really my bag. I’ve reviewed some in the past and there are some exceptions to this done well such as Dr Dre’s 2001. But for the most part, I feel for albums like these to succeed, you need a few key factors.

-Absolute Quality 

-Synchronicity between all artists involved

-Fluency from track to track.

If these three factors can be established, then this kind of album can be an enjoyable listen! Thankfully, we have such an album!

So this is the latest album by Equinox/Crooked Halo featuring the likes of 

-FERKDOE

-CHIEF KAMACHI 

-K3VOH

-PROTOTYPE 

-JACK, THE RAPPER

-REKS

-DJ TMB

-TRAGEDY KHADAFI

-RELLIK

-BEEF THE LOST CAUZE

-SUSPECT

-SABAC RED

-SCANDALIST

-CAPPADONNA

-ONYX

-DOMEZ

-LIZLEO

-ILL BILL

-C. RAE

-RAEKWON

-BLOCK MCCLOUD

-PAST ONE

-DOAP NIXON

And on the production, we have 

-SKINNY BONEZ THA GODFATHA

-VINT MENTALZ

-FLOUN

-K3VOH

-FICHE NESS

-VHERBAL

With cuts from -DJ R & DUB L

Man, it’s always a handful to write all these features down, but it’s always worth it because what you come across in this project is a harmonious combination of artists and producers that provides an engaging experience that will make any hip-hop fan happy regardless of the country or region you prefer to listen to!

This project, compared to his other one, is very mysterious and fantastical in nature. With the theme being ‘The River Styx’, they try their best to incorporate those mythological, supernatural sounds and samples to set the scene. Of course, provided with a hip-hop flavour, but I love how the tracks have stuff like ‘Choir Vocals’ or ‘Big horns, grand strings’ and an overall cinematic quality to it to try best to represent the theme at hand.

If I had to guess their reasoning for the large roster, it is to make the sounds attributed to it done as much justice as possible, and maybe doing that with one or two men would be an impossible task? Whether that’s true or not, and if that’s even their reasoning at all, I understand it. This project definitely benefits from the sizeable team, and they make shit pop!

Speaking of said roster, I gotta say this first. They have a guy on cunt on the roster (Australian term for guy, not a diss) who sounds just like Slim Shady LP Eminem! High pitch with witty flows. Whichever one he is, he’s dope.

For the rest of them, we have your usual suspects come together under the ‘Equinox’ banner, but we also have some new acts appear, such as my main man ‘Skinny Bonez Tha Godfatha’ and even some celebrity names! Such as Raekwon, Onyx, Capadonna, and so forth.

As I mentioned above, a MUST HAVE for albums like these is perfect chemistry and synchronicity, and this album provides both. You can feel their passion and enthusiasm across each verse, bar, and word spoken! You can feel them giving their all and not wanting a single lacklustre performance, trying their best to lock in their flows, outdo the one that came before with their lyricism and delivery, and just be the best that they can be, and I feel that!

You can feel the energy in the room, the competitive atmosphere and spirit, and all of that fuses into the music itself to create a memorable and hard-hitting display of hip-hop music!

Overall, another solid drop from the boys! They may be huge in numbers, but they are equally huge in passion and talent, which makes it all worth it!

https://open.spotify.com/album/6bH6sqnU34nd4QpvJqj2Ao?si=4CGePOM0SaWlYuc2Xqt7GQ

(Pyramid Skeemz)

Ironically, this will be the second time I review an album of this name in the same month, hell, within 24 hours of each other. Different spelling but the same name, and so with that phenomenon taking place, let’s talk about it!

This is the latest collaboration project between MC J Shxnobi and producer Omar Glomar and features 10 tracks and 23 minutes of content featuring the likes of 

-Hoody Santana

-YOUNG STADIX 

And I have to say the album is a completely different sound than the other one of the same name, but this record features hypnotic, powerful, and eccentric sounds that make you think and your mind wonder while also experiencing stimulating feelings throughout your body as they provide numerous masterful production, techniques, and loops to create the ultimate atmosphere of surrealist music that plants its originality into this year’s ever-growing pool of quality music that is trademarked with Omar Glomar!

As far as J Shxnobi is concerned, he’s someone who impressed me with his sharp wit, his lethal lyricism, and his awe-inspiring enthusiasm and natural charisma across the 10 tracks. With only 23 minutes of time to kill, he doesn’t waste any time in delivering precise strikes to the instrumentals and leaves a lasting impression that no doubt the audience will feel for days to come.

He has a great chemistry with the features mentioned above, and his natural synchronicity with Omar proves evident as his bars, verses feel exactly what each track needed and complement the production perfectly as if they shared the same mind!

A very impressive showing by these two men. Although not socially the same as the other album of the same name, the quality is definitely there, and I’m sure hip-hop fans far and wide will find enjoyment from this album! 

https://open.spotify.com/album/4vc82a5YLvCyhnBz2gN5Gd?si=s-4KDF7kRtuNvCqhC2yxtA

(Baggage Claims)

FutureWave. Talk about a producer who has hit nothing but net for the last few years. He was arguably the best producer of 2024, with most of the best albums of that year done by him. In this year, he’s already dropped the critically acclaimed ‘Stadium Lo Champions’, and now he’s back with what happens to be a vault, compilation album featuring old, stored tracks with MC Daniel-Son that’s been mastered and released under one 43-minute project!

This album features the likes of: 

-Al Divino

-Raspy

-Bito Slime

-King Bliss

-Asun Eastwood

-Recognize Ali

And according to Future, this album also features tracks from the first time they were in the studio together! 

Now, what FutureWave brings to life is a boom bap spectacle that is every bit as theatrical and surreal as any of his other releases. He brings his trademark attention to detail, his ability to turn any instrument and sound into a gargantuan feeling powerhouse that makes every second feel like a cinematic experience that you’re listening to on massive Dolby Atmos speakers right in front of your face!

This album is a mixture of smooth, lo-fi, and breathtakingly soothing to the rawest and hardest, muddiest sounds you’ve ever heard in your fucking life! The diverse influences and samples are ridiculous and only further prove why FutureWave is considered one of the greatest in the underground right now! He can truly turn water into wine, rock into gold, and sound into classics!

What can I say about the MC Daniel-Son that hasn’t already been said? He’s been putting years grinding and honing his talent, and this project is literally a celebration of that, of his career, and accomplishments up until now. I first discovered him with his album ‘BUSHMAN BODEGA’, and since then, he’s only continued to impress me more and more. 

The fact that he has 43 minutes of heat stored away is absolutely mind-blowing. Features with Al Divino and Asus Eastwood on the same track?! And we were hidden from this till now is criminal! 

If you know Daniel Son, then you know what he’s about. No-nonsense delivery, cold flow, and witty, street lyricisms with his pitbull-like intensity and in-your-face energy and natural charisma. Of course, anytime he’s alongside FutureWave, he goes off, and an album with nothing but vault bangers from the duo; you know this is the case here as well!

This is a celebration album not only of the fastest rising MC’s of the underground but of a partnership so dominant that the world tunes in when they drop, so make sure you don’t miss out on the magic!

https://www.wavgodmusic.com/shop?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAadrLCeJErK6NSafG19OIRLYccvrEec9In1yWgEj89HLKFm6-xxoNxuqqANW-A_aem_Lc0c_AMNJzS1vdHyRb-dBw

(Cannotseemypeak)

Damn, I wasn’t expecting this from Here’s Johnny! Also, this is the first single I’ve found on Paka The Plug, which is dope! So let’s talk about it!

This is the latest offering by Here’s Johnny and producer Lord Mixer. One of many I’ve covered already, and this one is definitely different from the rest I’ve covered. First of all, it’s only 1 minute and 16 seconds, so it does feel like it ends abruptly, but in their style, it’s common to expect at this point. 

But what really stands out is that instrumental! It’s definitely unlike anything I’ve heard him on before. 

It’s this choir vocal loop that gives this goosebump feeling like you’re listening to classical music from the Renaissance era! Combined with a traditional/skeletal hip-hop beat, you get one of the most unique and beautifully done productions I’ve heard in a minute. I feel the shortened length does work in this case to preserve the aura and vibe of this track! Similar to what Ear Sweatshirt did on his album ‘Some Rap Songs’, where each song was kept short to preserve the intensity of the sounds themselves, and I feel the same motive went into this!

Now, Here’s Johnny, although providing his usual unconventional charisma, it’s not as over-the-top or intense as it normally is. I feel he’s just focused on giving an excellent performance to best complement that atmospheric beat! With only just over one minute, he doesn’t waste any time utilising his dynamic wordplay, his adventurous and sturdy lyricism, and his bare-bone, in-your-face flow that he’s so known for. 

I gotta say, considering the time he was given, he absolutely nailed the rap verse, and I swear even spoke in reverse at one point? Which was wild! 

I’d say this is probably my favourite single so far. That beat is unbelievable, and the verse, for what’s worth, was fun, memorable, and dope! 

https://youtu.be/XulX2J2VUrU?si=KseUUCwmlbzvRBLe

(Latore)

The Bad Seed and producer s-tewe are back for another single from their upcoming EP ‘The Good Parts’, and with every new single, I get more hyped for this project to come! 

This new track is two minutes and fifteen seconds of pure fire. This is just Seed inheriting his pure NY-inspired energy and sound, throwing back to the 90’s East Coast Era of your Jay-Z, DMX, and Biggie shit, that in your face, stomp your throat with bloody Air Jordan shit! 

This beat is the perfect example of a throwback sound done with a modern flair. You have that synth-chord-heavy beat loop, what that East Coast traditional beat that is so tough you can’t help but scrunch your face up and have your neck bopping from the dope sounds. It seems the more Seed and s-tewe collaborate, the more it brings out the best of both men, and if this EP is produced by him, then it should be nothing but straight boss energy by the two!

Of course, when you have Bad Seed on the mic, no one is safe, and the culture is put on notice because not only is he your OG’s favourite OG, but he’s the kind of rapper most avoid due to his brutal honesty, his don’t give a fuck attitude, and his relentless rhymes, and he brings them all in spades across this project!

His blunt force approach to his delivery is trademark iconic. His experiences, pen game, and lyricism are unmatched as he drips the NY flavour in your ear, and his fluent flow kicks in the door! 

Whether he’s rapping from the 90’s, 2000’s, 2010’s, or 2020’s, he ain’t never the one to fuck with, and his consistency and ability in this day and age is proof of that! 

Another DOPE offering from the Seed himself, and with that banging production, it only gets me more hyped for the EP release! 

https://thebadseed6.bandcamp.com/track/latore

(SideB)

Can you guess who’s back? (In the words of Jack Nicholson) HERE’S JOHNNY! I could probably quit my job and just work full-time doing nothing but his reviews and still not catch up! But nonetheless, we are going to try!

So, this is another collab between Here’s Johnny and LordMixer, and I’m pretty sure there’s a SideA to cover soon, but regardless, this is a two-minute and 16-second blitz track that is made to come, go, and imprint on the mind of the listener! 

So, this project sounds like a thriller movie (like Shining) in the way the notes just keep building over time like an alternate version of the famous ‘Shepard’s Scale’ sound that gives off the illusion of the pitch going higher and higher when really it doesn’t.

Imagine a sound similar to that but in hip-hop format and with a touch of grimy/muddy flair to the instrumental. It’s definitely a unique and original track that is perfect for the likes of Here’s Johnny to jump on and run through like he does all his beats!

If you’re new to Here’s Johnny, he’s an MC who not only has a ridiculous release rate but contains a high-energy, raw, powerful voice and persona that makes for an intimidating listen for newcomers, but for him, it’s how he is in the studio period. 

As he is on this one, his rhymes are witty and creative, his flow is aggressive, and his delivery is in your face, crude, and relentless, never being the type to hold back or tone himself down for the sake of the listeners; he only has one setting ‘full speed’, and that combined with his ruthless, bully vibe persona confirms his spot in the underground as THE force to reckon with! 

https://youtu.be/sYQXHuJW23o?si=o9CbkA4jtYZpUcPs