Deep Cuts: Metals Hidden Gems are the bones beneath the beast’s skin. The hidden framework holding the genre together. These aren’t the tracks you blast on the main stage, they’re the ones you discover in the shadows.
Lurking on forgotten B-sides and buried deep in albums like cursed treasure, they’re jagged, unpolished, and unrepentant. Songs forged in sweaty rehearsals and born in moments too strange, heavy, or pure to ever hit mainstream.
The true lifeblood of metal isn’t just in the hits, it runs in the underground wells that only the dedicated drink from.
Deep Cuts Metals Hidden Gems are the songs traded like relics between diehards, passed along in hushed reverence. In this series, we dig through the dust, scrape the rust, and bring these hidden monsters to light. This week we are featuring staff picks. Ready to descend into the vault?
Panzerchrist: Weak is The Flesh – Maleficium Part 1
“This week’s Deep Cuts Metals Hidden Gems brings you “Weak Is the Flesh” is where Panzerchrist’s 2024 pivot clicks into place. Ove Lungskov’s (also of Rotten Ocean) relentless double kick turns the track into a siege engine while the band threads in surprisingly prominent keyboards an eerie shimmer that cuts through the blast zone.
Listen for the serpentine riffing and a sudden, rumbling drum break around 3:45 that feels like the floor giving way beneath you. Released December 6, 2024 via Emanzipation, it also spotlights founder Michael Enevoldsen’s role on bass/keys and the sharpened guitar tandem of Frederik O’Carroll and Danny Bo, pushing the group’s blackened death core toward a more death metal forward brutality without losing the occult chill.
Derek Gann
Gorguts: The Battle of Chamdo – Colored Sands
The Battle of Chamdo appears smack in the middle of the band’s last full-length album (and JUNO Award-winning) Colored Sands at Season of Mist Records. The album was inspired by both Opeth and Porcupine Tree’s The Incident. “The Battle of Chamdo” jolts the listener out of the album’s meditative opening with its martial piano and string quintet arrangement.
A standalone classical interlude that cleaves Colored Sands into twin realms. Written by Luc Lemay and recorded with strings, the piece embodies the 1950 Chinese invasion of Tibet.
Its militaristic rhythm serves as a conceptual hinge between the album’s celebration of Tibetan beauty and the tragic descent that follows. Lemay himself likened the track to the pivotal turning point of the narrative, elevating it from mere transition to haunting manifesto. “Last weeks edition of Deep Cuts Metals Hidden Gems have featured another Season of Mist artist, Cryptopsy.
Christy Norris
Cypcore: The Moment of Impact – Take The Consequence
“The Moment of Impact” punches through on Cypecore’s 2010 album Take the Consequence like a whispered threat turned explosive. It rides on a wave of Swedish styled melodic death metal fused with industrial undercurrents. Think Dark Tranquillity meets Soulfly, creating a tightrope of aggression and mechanized groove.
The verses are delivered in a low, almost menacing whisper, twisting the listener’s spine before the riff erupts. This track, alongside “The Balance,” showcases the band’s ability to meld melody and machine with unapologetic force, while the production keeps everything crisp and razor-sharp.
McKauley Kitterman
Antigama: Crystal Tune – Meteor
“Crystal Tune,” tucked midway through Antigama’s 2013 album Meteor, hits like a well aimed detonation. At just 2:41, it delivers tightly controlled chaos grindcore aggression laced with abrupt stop start turns that keep you off balance.
Positioned between the noise driven “Stargate” and other ful tilt assaults, it acts as both a pivot and a gut punch. Recorded at Warsaw’s Progresja Studio and mastered by Scott Hull, the track embodies Meteor’s mix of precision and volatility, proof that Antigama can pack more purpose and progression into two and a half minutes than some bands manage in an entire album.
Lindon Faynes
HeXeN: Defcon Rising – Being and Nothingness
“Defcon Rising” lands smack in the heart of HeXeN’s sophomore album Being and Nothingness, and it’s a masterclass in modern thrash executed with melodic flair. The band, riding the mid-2000s retro thrash revival infused this 2012 LP with NWOBHM-style riffs, technical guitar solos, and a songwriting maturation that elevates the track beyond nostalgic bashing.
Frontman Andre Hartoonian’s passionate bass work and socio-political lyrical bent anchor the track, while the chemistry between guitarists Ronny Dorian and Artak Tavaratsyan shines through every intricate lead. Recorded in LA, “Defcon Rising” embodies that tightrope walk between aggression and melody, a rare thrill for thrash purists and progressive fans alike.
Tom Wilke
Enthrope: Moon Chains Descent – Tomorrow’s Dead Days
“Moon Chains Descent” creeps in as the third cut from Enthrope’s lone full length, Tomorrow’s Dead Days (2010). Released digitally by Supernova Records on May 11, 2010, it’s a compact five minute descent into melodic death metal that brims with ominous atmosphere and lyrical apocalypse.
Enthrope hails from Espoo, Finland, and though they only dropped this single full length before disappearing, Moon Chains Descent remains a standout. A focal point in a discography that’s as haunting as it is fleeting.
Graham Burke
Belphegor: The Goatchrist – Lucifer Incestus
“The Goatchrist,” buried on Belphegor’s 2003 album Lucifer Incestus is available at Napalm Records, is a blast fest masterclass in blackened death brutality. It fuses precision blast beats, razor-edged riffs, and scorching solos into a relentless assault that’s as technical as it is savage.
Overshadowed by the title track, it remains a fan favorite sleeper hit. Proof that Belphegor’s oldest era could summon chaos with surgical skill.
There’s an unpolished menace here, the kind that feels dangerous in the best way, as if the song might collapse under its own fury but never does. It’s the sound of a band sharpening its blades before stepping onto the global stage.
Lucien Drake
Dimmu Borgir: Inn i evighetens mørke – Dimmu Borgir’s 1994 demo/EP of the same name
This isn’t just a demo, it’s a frozen relic from 1994 when Dimmu Borgir were still carving their identity in the Norwegian frost.
Released on a 1,000‑copy 7″ via Necromantic Gallery, this EP delivers nothing but raw atmosphere, haunted synths. The kind of black metal melancholy that even the band admitted was rare elsewhere as they put it in a 1996 interview. Their early work evoked “majestic sadness which few other black metal bands seem to be capable of creating.”
There’s no orchestral bombast. Just cold ambition, minimal production, and a sense that you’re peering into a darker, more primal version of the band before the stage lights ever flickered on. For hunters of genuine deep cuts, this is black-metal archaeology at its finest.
Caine Blackthorn
Melechesh: The Siege of Lachish – Djinn
Melechesh has more hidden treasure than the Baghdad Library. We are spotlighting a real deep cut that only the die hards whisper about while casual listeners sleep on it.
The track The Siege of Lachish is a textbook Melechesh deep cut. Emotionally heavy, sonically slick, and conceptually dark. Tucked away in the middle of their second album Djinn, “The Siege of Lachish” stretches just over six minutes, but something sneaks in afterward.
After a stretch of silence, a reversed Mesopotamian chant creeps in at around 9:32, adding a phantom presence that blurs the line between music and ritual. It’s the kind of detail only the obsessive notice, and it’s pure, twisted brilliance.
Caine Blackthorn
Type O Negative: 12 Black Rainbows – The Least Worst Of
“12 Black Rainbows” is one of those tracks that makes you wonder how on earth it didn’t end up on a proper studio album. It’s the perfect song for this weeks Deep Cuts Metals Hidden Gems.
Born during the dark, brooding sessions for World Coming Down in 1999, it carries the same heavy emotional weight and cathedral sized riffs that made that record such a devastating masterpiece.
For reasons only Peter Steele and the band truly knew, it was left off the final tracklist. A decision that still baffles die hard fans. Instead, it slipped quietly into the world as a B-side on the European Everything Dies single, a secret gift for those lucky enough to stumble upon it.
Hearing it for the first time back then felt like finding a hidden room in a haunted mansion familiar, but steeped in a slightly different shade of shadow.
A year later, on June 21, 2000, 12 Black Rainbows finally got a wider release on The Least Worst Of, a compilation that was anything but a throwaway collection. Sitting among edits, rarities, and deep cuts, the track stood tall as one of the compilation’s crown jewels.
It’s a brooding march of doom riffs, glacial pacing, and Peter’s voice dripping with that intoxicating mix of despair and gallows humor.
For fans, it was vindication. Proof that this song deserved to be heard alongside Type O’s best. To this day, it remains one of their most underappreciated works.
A haunting echo from the World Coming Down era that still gives you that unmistakable feeling only Type O Negative could conjure… like the world is ending, and somehow, you’re okay with it.
Kevin McSweeney
“If you missed last week’s Deep Cuts Metals Hidden Gems where we featured 10 killer tracks you need to hear. Catch up here.”
