I usually run from anything in the drone and noise lane. It’s not even a prejudice, it’s just that most of it drains me fast. But I’m committed to documenting, through my lens, every 2026 release that comes out of Africa within the metal spectrum, and I couldn’t let this one pass. The truth is Caged Bastard’s Cold, Cruel. surprised me.
It’s a single 36 minutes and 36 seconds piece, and I can’t stop staring at that number, 36:36, like it’s there for a reason. Symmetry. A mirror. A signal. And the time is well spent, especially in the first 22 minutes. The drums come in right away. Then the bass takes over, so low and so distorted, but with the lead role, and as someone who will always be a bass person, that grabbed me immediately. Behind it, there are layers of guitar and synth effects sitting further back, more like a weather system than riffs, and about half a minute in a voice comes in that fits this atmosphere perfectly. Heavy. Black. Dense. It instantly made me imagine how terrifying this could be live with a full lineup, in a room that can actually project the fear hiding inside this black and sludge core.
From around the five-minute mark, the drone and noise become more present, and somehow it works. The record isn’t cyclical, and it isn’t a straight line either. It moves in curves and counter-curves, and that suits the world it’s describing. The Observer starts detached, then becomes estranged, until detachment itself turns into a kind of cruelty. Not cruelty of flesh or violence, not domination or intent, just the cold logic of seeing clearly and having no need to react, forgive, or believe. It cuts, simply because clarity kills illusion.
After those first 22 minutes, the stretch from there to 36:36 feels like decompression after a long session of mental exercise, because that’s what this is. It makes you imagine. It absorbs you. The closing stretch lands on the image Muhammad Oun uses himself: the Observer as “a monk walking out of a burning house, without running.”
Tunisia’s metal scene keeps getting stronger, and I never expected to say this, but drone and noise have rarely sounded this good to me.
