๐ถ๐ฎ March 2025 Roundup
March has been interesting on a personal level for me. I think I've finally managed to crack the code to being productive in my day to day life (blog post about that coming later), and my daughter turned 12 years old which has had me reflecting on fatherhood and family life quite a bit. They really do grow up too fast.
We've also had exceptionally nice weather this time of year for our neck of the woods, which has given both me and my partner some much needed vitality going into this new year after another long winter. It's been really good for us.
I haven't finished my book yet, but I'm making good progress. I've always been terrible at books, but one of my themes for the year is reading, so I'm making a conscious effort to do it more often and for longer periods at a time. Right now I'm having trouble even sitting down to read for more than ten minutes at a time, but hopefully it will get easier.
Enough about all that though! There was also a lot of interesting and unique media experiences that I wanna share with you all, so here we go.
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The Games
REPO
Coop Survival Horror, 2025 (PC/Steam)
There have been so many of these games released in the past few years. Trying to cash in on the success of Phasmophobia (a game I never really thought much of), these streamer-friendly-hang-out-with-your-buddies-while-getting-jumpscared games have all felt really cheap and bland, and in this guy's opinion they just look plain bad.
Enter REPO; A game made by a small swedish studio called semiwork (yes, with an uncapitalized 'S'). They've managed to make a game in the same genre that actually doesn't suck!
The premise is simple; You play a team of repo-robots that are sent out by The Taxman to collect valuables from a variety of spooky milieus. It's fairly easy at first; The valuables are easy to spot and you can carry most of them in the "valuables cart" that is provided to the team. The monsters are sparse and can fairly easily be avoided. However, as you complete levels, the amount of valuables you need to retrieve goes up, the average valuable size and weight increases, the levels get bigger and more sprawling, and the monsters more plentiful.
Thankfully you can make the game slightly easier on yourself by purchasing upgrades along the way, but you are limited by how much money you earn as a team in each level, and all upgrades are single-use only, which makes the purchasing decisions between levels feel very deliberate and impactful.
For the most part, the game relies on its charm to keep players engaged. The robots that players inhabit are comically designed, with their heads opening like trashcan lids whenever the players speak using the in-game proximity based voice chat, or even text-to-speech (which is always on, btw). Add in the small details like the TTS changing pitch based on whether the player is looking up or down, or how the robots' eyes dart around to look at the other players while standing still, for being a scary game it's actually really cute. There's proper art design and personality here, which is way more than I can say for most other games in this genre.
The key part of what makes this game fun to play though is its physics-based engine. Every object, including the players and monsters, have a weight and a physicality to them. When masses collide, either with the level or each other, damage happens. Players can be killed (monsters too), and the valuables you carry can be destroyed by impacts. There's an inertia to everything, even the players, and to carry heavy objects you might even need two or three players at once to get an item to the extraction point. But watch out, if one player slips or loses their grip, the entire item can break, losing you thousands of dollars!
I have been having an absolute blast playing this in groups of three to six friends, and at the asking price it is well worth your time if you can get enough friends together to actually play it.
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The music
Caustic Phlegm - Purulent Apocalypse
Death Metal, 2025
Sometimes you find something that's so off the wall you just can't help but have this shit-eating grin on your face the entire time you're listening to it. This Scottish death metal act's debut LP certainly was that for me.
The vocals are the obvious thing to focus on here. Gurgling vocals aren't new to extreme metal, but I can't recall ever hearing anything to this extent. Every utterance is done in this growling gurgle or spewing noise that just sounds absolutely demoniacal. It's totally incomprehensible and so over the top and stupid that I kind of respect it all the more for it.
Once you get past the vocals though, and actually listen to the music here, there's quite a lot to like. It's a very groovy affair, with great slapping bassdrums, 'barrel' snare, and a chunky chainsaw guitar tone. The production is mid at best, sometimes sounding like it's all recorded onto an old-school cassette tape, but I'm thinking that's very intentional. The album has these synth passages and melodies that invoke an eerie yet familiar nostalgic feeling, like the kind of background music you would hear in very early horror and monster shows on TV. The production even makes it sound like there is a tape warble effect on everything, which helps to augment the retro vibes. It all fits together very well, and it gets heavy.
I totally get that this will not be everyone's cup of tea, but man, I just love the uniqueness of it and how it sounded so very different than anything else I listened to this month. I do believe that once you can actually listen to and enjoy something like this that you've reached the extreme metal endgame. Give it a spin!
My favorite track off the album is probably The Teratopholist. You can listen to that, and the album in its entirety, on Bandcamp!
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Honningbarna - Soft Spot
Noise Rock / Punk, 2025
From my very own country of Norway, the infamous Honningbarna dropped this latest offering recently. I've been aware of the band for ages, but none of what I've heard before has captured my attention quite like this album has. Not to mention the striking album cover. I mean, what even is this?
After the incredible spoken word intro that vulnerably describes the bullet points of the vocalist's life lived thus far and his hypothetical future, we get the absolute fattest distorted bass riff which serves as a foundation for some menacing percussion, shrieking fierce vocals, and very dirty distorted guitars shortly after. This shit goes hard, and it hardly lets up for the rest of the record.
They really took it to another level with this one. Check out the opener Schรคfer. If that tickles your fancy, then listen to MP5 and Rรธd Bic.
This can unfortunately not be purchased on Bandcamp, but can be streamed in its entirety on Spotify.
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Flagman - Tastes Incredible
Alt Rock, 2024
Seriously though, this band sounds like if Primus suddenly were reborn as a nu-metal/grunge band. On this record we have some Faith No More, some Nirvana, and some SOAD, all while sporting that quirky vaudevillian style that Les Claypool and his band of merry men are known for.
Definitely the most fun album I've had with an album this month. Check out Hot Off The Log, You're So Lucky This Isn't A Real Gun, and Hollow to see if this is for you.
The whole album is available on Bandcamp.
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The next monthly roundup will of course be published in April, but I hope to publish at least two other blog posts before then so watch this space.
Until the next one! โ๏ธ