REVIEW: Crown Magnetar - The Hollowing of Godflesh [2026]
Artist: Crown Magnetar
Album: The Hollowing of Godflesh
Within the deathcore space, revivalism—specifically that of the MySpace sound/era—has become all the rage. Growing in popularity since its uptick in 2021 from a murmur to a deafening tidal wave of new acts, deathcore revival acts and their corollary popularity have nearly overshadowed the genre’s “modern” cohort. This is partially self-inflicted—a combination of nostalgia and reversion to more provocative, violent writing makes many of the more contemporary artists within the deathcore space feel tame to a point where it’s worth questioning if they were ever really deathcore at all. With all that said, there are a subset of modern deathcore acts that continued to create intense and exciting deathcore without reverting to 2008, primarily by channeling the same influences as old-school deathcore acts more than channeling influence from other, contemporary deathcore bands—and Crown Magnetar is chief among them. Creating harsh, immolating technical deathcore that leans heavily on brutal death metal and tech-death to impart breakdown-studded, skin-rending misanthropy into the listener. On The Hollowing of Godflesh, Crown Magnetar do this better than, perhaps, any of their prior releases to date. Dense, devastating and without even a modicum of filler, The Hollowing of Godflesh is a marvelously intense and brutalizing record that sees a strong band within the deathcore niche at their strongest.
Two words one might use to describe The Hollowing of Godflesh are—among others—fast and pissed. If this is your first experience with Crown Magnetar, you’ll figure out what they’re all about within the opening salvos of “Gun Eater,” and if you’re already familiar with their game, then it should come as no surprise that they launch out of the gate hot. A murky, muddy slam riff churns over nightmarish percussion—a pattern that slowly decays into a mountain-leveling breakdown one step at a time. While a sound introduction to just how heavy Crown Magnetar can be, other songs—personal favorite “The Hollowing of Godflesh” and another strong entry “Torture Engine” highlight the dialectic the band uses by juxtaposing mind-numbing speed with back-breaking brutality. Here, drums by Byron London (and played live by Nithing’s Matt Kilner) continue to shine just as they have on Crown Magnetar’s The Codex of Flesh, Everything Bleeds and more. Guitarist Rob Maramonte and bassist Mike Sahm absolutely obliterate, and considering Maramonte’s previous stints in Fallujah and The Zenith Passage, it should come as no surprise that riffs on “Godkiller” and “Domination” do…well, just that; dominate. A miasma of raunchy, murderous grooves and riffs segue into spine-crushing breakdowns and slams without hesitation or remorse on…well, just about every song on Crown Magnetar’s third LP with enough voracity to be consistently devastating but enough fluidity and dynamism to ensure that each song maintains its own sonic identity.
While Crown Magnetar are an instrumental juggernaut—especially with Maramonte behind the fretboard and the addition of Kilner for live percussion—frontman Dan Tucker has demonstrated time and time again that he’s no slouch, and The Hollowing of Godflesh continues to hammer that point home. In some ways, Tucker is up to his usual (and welcome) tricks on the new record; telltale, bitterly spat profanities on “Gun Eater” snap the listener back to their 2023 cut “The Killing Stone” or lyrics like “decapitate your God and piss in the neck hole” seem practically made for bold impact font T-shirt back print (and they are, if you check the merch store). In other ways, Tucker’s range, dynamism and intensity seem stepped up another level from their 2025 EP—abundant on “Godkiller” and “Desecrate Infinite” among other intense and visceral cuts from Godflesh. Where Tucker shines above and beyond his already exemplary prior performances, however, is once more where Crown Magnetar differentiate themselves from most contemporary deathcore bands—by leaning more heavily into brutal death metal and slam territory. Even with much of “Domination” feeling like a faster-paced, groove-heavy cut that even encroaches on death-djent territory at times (a la “Dead Season”), the ending feels as though it wouldn’t be out of place from the likes of Dying Fetus—something very few vocalists (and bands) can do convincingly. All in all, Tucker’s prowess throughout The Hollowing of Godflesh can be summarized in that it takes everything he has excelled at from The Prophet of Disgust onwards and kicks everything up several notches, seeing him do everything he’s previously done well done to practical perfection.
Throughout The Hollowing of Godflesh, relentless and pulverizing technicality shreds the listener as though they were steeped head-first into a running wood chipper—and I doubt Crown Magnetar would have it any other way. Drawing influence from brutal death metal, technical death metal and hardcore in the same way that deathcore’s progenitors did, Crown Magnetar demonstrate there is still appeal to the genre’s modern iteration. The band’s third LP is far and away the most refined and distilled—sharpened and honed—version of the band, and serves as a high bar for which only previous few other deathcore releases from 2026 can compete with, making it a must-listen for anyone with even a passive interest in the genre.
9.5/10
For Fans Of: Whitechapel, Despised Icon, Defeated Sanity, Dying Fetus, PSYCHO-FRAME
By: Connor Welsh