Born of grief and darkness: Splendidula's Absentia emerges as a devastating fourth album shaped by loss and sorrow, blending black metal and doom with fragile atmospheric passages — "this is our pain" — featuring guest contributions by Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride) and Tim Yatras (Austere), while the title track single offers a suffocating preview. Oskoreien's All Too Human delivers "unrelenting waves and layers" across a philosophical concept album exploring free will through Charles Whitman's tragic story, and Oskoreien's self-titled debut fuses atmospheric black metal with post-rock and neofolk in swaths of grandiosity. Elk Hunter's Arriving Intact bridges past and future, telling dark, meaningful stories as the project grows from studio vision into a full live band.