From Bandcamp, “Australians from Canberra, PLOUGHSHARE return to the scene with their apocalyptic, dissonant black/death metal. In "Second Wound," the third full-length album, the band continues in the wake of the "Tellurian Insurgency" EP, expanding its sound on the basis of the goals achieved with the previous experimental album. PLOUGHSHARE have managed to amalgamate the cacophonous black/death of the early days with their late industrial drifts, if possible pushing themselves into even darker and more terrifying extreme metal territories.”

The album has five songs, and “The Fall of All Creatures” is first. The sound is very thick, overgrown, and dissonant, and it rises like the waves from the coming of a storm. The bass work is fantastic, and the band has command of a sound that is unraveling by the second. As it continues, the torture seems to get worse, until that is all that you have left in the world to look forward to. “Desired Second Wound” begins with a creeping sound from bass and drums, and something nefarious stirs in the background, but the descent to utter madness soon follows. From there, it moves back and forth subtly between a slow creep and all out chaos.  “Thorns Pressed Into His Head” is a tale of utter torture, and it heats up quickly, like accelerant being applied to an already raging fire. At times the unraveling stops for just a few bars, and some dark melodies protrude, but the album seems to be about how far the band can push themselves into the abyss.

“The Mockery of the Demons” is an eleven minute exercise, and some of the juxtaposition here is between the bass guitar, which is almost playful at times, and the deep, punishing sound from the guitars, drums, and vocals. The dissonance seems to grow throughout the song, like a pesky weed that is the height of your house before you know it, and has fangs. “So Reverend and Dreadful” closes the album, and it’s as if the torture and dissonance are both dialed off the charts. At times I could swear something was behind me while I listened to this song, as it created a heightened sense of awareness that I was not alone. It seems to want to end in a bloodbath, as the creature rises out of the abyss and it’s face is too hideous to even view. It lays waste to everything around you, until the world goes completely black and cold.

This album plunges headfirst into the heart of blackness and darkness, evoking the suffocating depths of the abyss. The music mirrors the vast emptiness and relentless weight of something unfathomably deep, while the guitars churn with a sense of foreboding, like black waves crashing against unseen shores. The drums pound with the steady rhythm of inevitable descent, and he atmosphere throughout the album is thick with dread—there are no glimmers of light, no respite from the enveloping darkness. Vocals emerge as distant, tortured cries, adding to the overwhelming sense of isolation, and it makes the listener feel trapped in a place where time and reality have no meaning.