Review: Corpse Bird – Forge (Full length, 2025) | Crust, black

Band info

Band: Corpse Bird
Album: ‘Forge‘
Released November 21st, 2025
Genre: crust, black metal
Location: UK

Review

Welcome yet again, dearest listeners, to another uplifting Review Friday time (just made up)! Ever wanted to know how would it sound to fuse At the Gates with Amebix and a black edge and folk-y kicks by queer voices? Search no more because we got you covered. We bring CORPSE BIRD to the game, formerly known as VOID ANGEL (with a notorious split w/ Sacral through Realm & Ritual and one w/ Growth on their own), from the UK, a duo self-presenting as “Queer Chaos Metal”.

If you’re still hooked to this review, we are certain you’ll find the result fitting for such a description. With “Forge”, their first release, from November 2025, under the CORPSE BIRD moniker, Heron and Pipistrelle traverse a quite ambitious artistic concept for us gathering features from both death metal and hardcore punk in the heart of this work, while adding to the canvas many strokes from quite other worlds such as black metal, crust and d-beat in some blasting bits, and a flute garnish as a final brooch.

Not a short musical experience at all, “Forge” encompasses in 5 songs all this, lead by both of the members’s voices and speaheaded particularly by a crude, shouted singing dragging more from the punk explosive fury, a constant melodic stringwork where the harmonies are immediately followed by bursts of undying energy, put together quite efficiently showing quite some seasoned expertise so far, making it all a compact album, where nothing feels off, and no note or moment disconnects the listener to the overall immersion in each song.

In all this, the duo also manages to fit a well written, heartfelt set of lyrics exploring personal themes for queerness, structural social critique, a fair pessimism towards the collapse of an unsustainable existence (social and ecological) or current colonial-imperial disasters such as the Palestinian scenario. All in all, this is a must listen and certainly our Friday uplifting soundtrack. Have a blast!

Band info

Review

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