Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.
Sallow Moth’s third album Mossbane Lantern is the biggest record Garry Brents has ever made. It propelled his streaming numbers to new heights and released on the largest label that’s supported him. Although, you must take this all with a grain of salt: those streaming numbers merely increased from the hundreds to the low thousands and that “large” label is, well, I, Voidhanger. To say that his new record is his biggest is more to praise his growing outreach rather than proclaim he’s going to take the title of 2025 Most Popular Metal Album from Sleep Token.
The attributes that prevent Brents from crossing over into broader metal acclaim are the same that attract his dedicated fanbase. Firstly, he’s versatile. His nu-metal project Memorrhage sounds like it was made by a different artist than Action Figure Triggers Earthquake, his IDM album. Likewise, you’d have no way of knowing he performed vocals for Demon Sluice based on his work under, say, the blackened grindcore moniker Homeskin. Brents inhabits these worlds when he enters them, breathing their air and accommodating to their customs. He’s beyond genre tourism and even genre proficiency. He’s digging into crevices and resurrecting tastes that misalign him with metal’s metagame, and that’s what makes his music exciting.
Sallow Moth is the type of death metal some people will hate, and I hope they do. It’s weirder than it says on the tin and will rub people who expect either typical brutal death or technical metal the wrong way. Heaven forbid what it will do to Bolt Thrower fans. It’s easy to make music that despises a specific genre, but Sallow Moth doesn’t. What Brents accomplishes is much harder — fully appreciating a niche. That unabashed love for death metal’s periphery draws a line in the sand so deep that those unwilling to entertain how far that periphery extends will sink. It’s a vibe check if there ever was one, though because it’s an album for oddities who adore odd death metal, it’s understandable that traditionalists would scoff at the quagmire on display.
Boiling Mossbane Lantern down to its components reveals equal parts Human-era Death, Cynic, and brutal death metal, with a specific segment recalling a deranged take on, of all things, Tyler, the Creator’s Flower Boy. It’s pigmented by the juvenile hallmarks of brutal death metal (sadly, there’s no PING drum tone, much to Ian Chainey’s dismay) and reconstituted as an art student’s thesis, punching it up with high-brow excursions while retaining the euphoria borne from learning how deep the metal rabbit hole goes. It answers the question that heshers asked each other as they passed around a joint, “What if Korn made Focus?”
To praise Sallow Moth is to also praise Garry Brents as an artist outside this project. Situated in Texas, he works seven days a week for a delivery service, rising early to work on music, and using what small liberties of time he has to play Magic: The Gathering (Sallow Moth is an MTG reference). Feed that reality to a child brought up with a traditional view of success and they’ll reply that it’s the opposite of glamorous. But flip it this way: Brents has stated that he’s living comfortably and that the only thing he’d rather do than make music is play competitive MTG. In fact, it was the pandemic that brought about this career shift. Prior to 2020, Brents’ main outfit was Cara Neir. With them, he crafted a handful of stellar blackened screamo records that eventually fed into his, as he calls it, “Myspace digigrind.” But, he was also playing competitive MTG and it was the shutdown of in-person tournaments that brought his focus back to music.
The pathways to success for metal are relatively slim, though there is an audience for off-kilter, openly artsy, and (as an adjective) heavy metal. Tomb Mold and Blood Incantation come to mind immediately. Brents orbits a different sphere, shaped by the myth of upwards mobility, extreme metal’s limited appeal, and mainstream support continuing to sleep on him. His main drive is to cover as many styles as he can with as much breadth as possible. There will always be another upcoming album in the midst of the hype cycle for his current record. He possesses forward momentum that could only be stopped by death or an MTG tournament, a work ethic that any employer would kill for but could never teach because it’s informed by a love of skill development and deliberate practice. There’s no promise of a cover feature anywhere, though there are swaths of music writers who adore Brents because his music is that damn good.
There’s a strong impulse to proclaim Mossbane Lantern as Brents’ crowning moment, but it’s just another highlight in his years-long creative run, and that’s what’s most spectacular about it. As soon as we finish talking about it, Brents will have released something else that’ll snatch our attention.
— Colin Dempsey
