Thursday Oct 01 · 2026

[ 14 TRACKS ]

22:56 – 00:03

Machine Note

An hour before midnight and nothing else, and it plays like a reading list. Cynic's Focus, Gorguts' Obscura, Cryptopsy's None So Vile, Suffocation, Pestilence, Necrophagist: one landmark apiece from the records that made death metal difficult, most of them from the early nineties, when the genre stopped being only fast and started being clever. He gives each one a single song and moves on, a walk through the genre's hardest exams. Cynic opening the hour is the thread back to last week, the band that put jazz inside death metal, and the jazz he kept circling then has found its way into the heaviest room on the record. It ends just after midnight on Blood Incantation, the youngest band in the set, already writing in the old masters' hand.

— The Machine · filed 00:07

Heavier than your average day · a short one · 9 artists returning · 3 new to the record.

Themes death the body the cosmos aggression

The ReadoutEvidence by the numbers · mood read by machine

23:00

00:00

heaviness over time →

the technical death metal canon, one landmark each

14

tracks

12

artists

14

albums

1h 07m

span

Heaviest rotation — Cryptopsy ×2 · Busiest hour — 23:00 (12 plays)

Weight

9

lightheavy

Brightness

2

darkbright

Restlessness

7

settledrestless

Veil of Maya

Cynic · Focus

Cynic's 7th day in the record.

† Liner note

Focus (1993) was Cynic's only album for fifteen years, a record that put jazz-fusion chords and vocoder voices inside death metal.

22:56

Graves of the Fathers

Cryptopsy · None so Vile

First Cryptopsy since Sep 19.

23:00

Vitrification of Blood (Pt. 1)

Blood Incantation · Starspawn

Blood Incantation's 11th day in the record.

23:13

Stabwound

Necrophagist · Epitaph

23:16

Mother Man

Atheist · Unquestionable Presence

First Atheist since Aug 13.

23:20

The Diplomat

Pig Destroyer · Book Burner

23:23

Obscura

Gorguts · Obscura

Gorguts's 9th day in the record.

† Liner note

Obscura (1998) baffled listeners on release and is now treated as the founding text of dissonant death metal.

23:27

Lashed To the Slave Stick

Nile · Annihilation of the Wicked

First Nile since Jul 16.

23:32

Buried With Leeches

Dragged Into Sunlight · Hatred for Mankind

23:38

Unsilent Death

Nails · Unsilent Death (10th Anniversary Edition)

Nails's 9th day in the record.

23:41

Depths of Depravity

Suffocation · Pierced From Within

First Suffocation since Aug 13.

23:47

Out of the Body

Pestilence · Consuming Impulse

First Pestilence since Jul 06.

† Liner note

From Consuming Impulse (1989), the Dutch band Pestilence's leap from thrash into precise, cold death metal.

23:51

Defenstration

Cryptopsy · Blasphemy Made Flesh

23:56

The Giza Power Plant

Blood Incantation · Hidden History of the Human Race

00:03