Enragement: Finland’s Brutalists Enter a New Era with ‘Extinguish All Existence’

The end begins with a planetary shudder. Mother Earth, ancient and unforgiving, awakes from a long slumber. In this awakening, there is no renewal, only retribution. Rock and bone are ground to dust. The fragile monuments of human ambition, our cities and systems, crumble into ruin. Thousands of souls, then millions, vanish into an indifferent emptiness. Silence reconquers the rubble. For now, the planet sleeps again.

This is not the logline for a summer blockbuster, but the stark, elemental vision animating ‘Abyssal Hellscapes,’ the first music video from the forthcoming fourth album by the Finnish band Enragement. The album itself bears a title of equally uncompromising finality: ‘Extinguish All Existence.’ For a band steeped in the brutal theatrics of death metal, a genre often preoccupied with fantastical gore and blasphemy, this thematic core feels chillingly immediate. It is a nihilistic vision, to be sure, but one that feels less like gothic fantasy and more like a dispatch from a potential future, a harrowing commentary on humanity’s precarious place in the natural world.

The album, set for release on October 3, 2025, marks a pivotal moment for the Helsinki-based quartet. It is their first for Transcending Obscurity Records, a prominent international label known for its discerning curation of extreme music, a partnership that signals a new level of ambition and reach for a band that has toiled in the underground for nearly two decades.

With ‘Extinguish All Existence,’ Enragement is not merely releasing another collection of songs; they are unleashing a cohesive and philosophically bleak statement, one that has been gestating for years and is now poised to find its widest audience yet. The choice to herald this statement with a narrative of ecological apocalypse, rather than the genre’s more familiar tropes of satanic rebellion or anatomical horror, is a potent artistic decision. It aligns the band’s ferocious sound with a deeply contemporary anxiety, suggesting that the most terrifying monsters are not demons from a storybook, but the consequences of our own actions reflected in the cold, unforgiving mirror of the natural world.

Enragement: The Sickness of Reality

The journey to this precipice has been a long and methodical one. Enragement’s story is not one of overnight discovery but of dogged persistence, a slow and deliberate honing of a sound and a worldview. The band was first conceived in 2006 in the small pagan-named village of Nummela, a municipality in the Uusimaa region of Finland. Yet, it would be a full eight years before their first album, ‘Omnimalevolence of Man,’ saw the light of day in 2014. This long gestation period, marked by the inevitable lineup shuffles and the challenges of finding a foothold in a crowded scene, speaks to a foundational patience. They were not a band in a hurry, but one determined to arrive fully formed.

That debut, self-released and raw, laid the groundwork for what was to come, combining various sub-genres of death metal and earning positive feedback within the underground community. It was followed by a steady, escalating series of albums, each marking a new stage in their development and a step up the rungs of the industry ladder. Their second album, 2017’s ‘Burned, Barren, Bloodstained,’ was released via the Finnish label Inverse Records and garnered praise for its novel approach to the genre, both at home and abroad.

By 2022, they had partnered with Rising Nemesis Records, a German label specializing in the subgenre of brutal death metal, for their third album, ‘Atrocities.’ A review from Metal Temple noted its blend of “Brutal Death Metal with a more traditional approach,” comparing them to international heavyweights like Belgium’s Aborted and Canada’s Kataklysm. This album, the band stated, “cemented the band’s style deep into the depths of brutal death metal.”

This career trajectory—from self-released, to a national independent label, to a specialized international genre label, and now to a globally recognized underground powerhouse in Transcending Obscurity—is not accidental. It mirrors a band systematically proving its worth at every level of the ecosystem. This is not the story of a sudden viral sensation, but of a slow, grinding accumulation of credibility, an artistic evolution that has earned its ascent.

Central to this evolution is the band’s chilling lyrical philosophy. While their themes have touched on the genre staples of “gore, horror, perversions,” their core principle is a commitment to realism. As they state on their website, their lyrics “mainly focus on true events based on the principle that no story is too sick to be told through music.”

In a 2015 interview, guitarist and vocalist Tuomas Iivanainen elaborated on this, explaining that inspiration often comes directly from the headlines: “In the end, mankind is so sick that sometimes you just have to read the news to come up with something fucked up enough to qualify as Death Metal lyrics.” This was the explicit concept behind ‘Atrocities,’ with the band noting, “No matter how unthinkably gruesome they may seem, each song on ‘Atrocities’ is based on true events. Regardless of how deep you dive into imaginary evil, fantasy never overcomes the sickness of reality.” This grounding in the real world gives their music a disturbing weight, transforming it from escapist horror into a confrontation with the darkness inherent in human nature.

This confrontation is delivered by a relentless sonic assault, distinguished by the band’s unusual use of three lead vocalists. The current lineup features Tuomas Iivanainen and Atte Ojanne on guitars and vocals, Juhana Heinonen on bass and vocals, and founding member Lasse Sannikka on drums. This triple-throated attack creates a layered, multifaceted vocal performance, a chorus of growls that adds to the overwhelming intensity of their sound.

After the departure of longtime bassist-vocalist Jarkko Niemi in 2018, the swift recruitment of Heinonen, a veteran of several other Finnish metal bands, ensured the band’s momentum continued unbroken. Now, with a stable lineup and nearly two decades of experience, Enragement exemplifies the power of slow, deliberate artistic growth.

Echoes in the Land of a Thousand Lakes

Enragement’s identity is rooted in their origins in Finland, a country with a famously deep and melancholic relationship with heavy metal. The nation’s extreme metal scene, particularly the death metal explosion of the early 1990s, carved out a unique and enduring identity. Unlike the more melodic approach of neighboring Sweden or the raw, satanic fury of Norway’s black metal scene, the classic Finnish death metal sound—often dubbed “Finndeath”—was something else entirely. It was, as described by musicians who lived through it, “doomier, darker, grim and haunting,” possessing a “built-in sadness” that seemed to emanate from the landscape itself.

This first wave was defined by its adventurousness and, at times, its outright strangeness. Bands like Amorphis pioneered a sound that blended brutal death metal with stately melodies and funereal doom passages. Demigod channeled the pitch-black spirit of the American East Coast scene but with undeniable hooks. And then there was Demilich, a band infamous for its bizarre, gurgling vocals and mutant-like musical complexity, whose 1993 album ‘Nespithe’ remains a landmark of avant-garde extremity.

This sound was born in relative isolation; before the internet, Finnish bands developed their styles through local gigs, fanzines, and the vital artery of international tape-trading, all catalyzed by radio shows like Klaus Flaming’s Metallilitto, which brought the sounds of the global underground to a generation of riff-hungry Finns.

Enragement, however, represents a different chapter in the Finnish story. While they are undeniably a product of their country’s metal-rich culture, their sound is frequently compared not to their Finnish forebears but to a more modern, international school of brutal death metal. Critics and even their own label consistently reference bands like Belgium’s Aborted, Canada’s Kataklysm, and France’s Benighted as sonic touchstones. This positions them not as revivalists of the classic Finndeath sound, but as participants in a global conversation.

This is not a contradiction, but an illustration of how musical geography has been reshaped by technology. The first wave of Finnish death metal was defined by its insularity, which fostered its unique, and sometimes wonderfully weird, character. Enragement emerged in a post-internet world, where a band from Helsinki could be in direct and immediate dialogue with artists from across the globe. They inherit the Finnish penchant for darkness and extremity—the cold, grim atmosphere that seems to permeate the nation’s art—but they apply it to a style that is internationally recognized and understood within the broader brutal death metal subculture.

Their story is a microcosm of the evolution of regional scenes in a globalized era. They are geographically Finnish, but artistically, they are citizens of a borderless underground, carrying a torch for their nation’s heavy legacy while forging a path that is distinctly their own.

‘Extinguish All Existence’: A New Chapter of Putridity

The band’s alliance with Transcending Obscurity Records for ‘Extinguish All Existence’ is more than a step up the industry ladder; it signals a crucial maturation. The partnership suggests a shared confidence that the album is a work of significant substance, one that aims to balance the requisite brutality of the genre with a rare and welcome dynamism.

Early reports suggest a conscious effort to sidestep the genre’s potential for monolithic sameness, with the music being described as varied, powerful, and engaging. The focus, it seems, is on crafting a cohesive and impactful artistic statement rather than a mere showcase of technical prowess.

This approach seems fitting for an album with such a grand, narrative ambition. To effectively chronicle the end of the world, a band needs more than just speed and volume; it requires a sense of dynamics, of build-up and release, of crushing heaviness and desolate quiet.

In essence, ‘Extinguish All Existence’ is being presented not simply as a collection of brutal songs, but as a contender for a more elevated status: a thoughtful, carefully constructed album that aims to be as memorable as it is merciless. It is a bold claim in a genre crowded with contenders, and one that late 2025 will put to the test.

The Baltic Rampage and the Brink of Existence

Before the album was fully unleashed upon the world, its fury was first tested in the crucible of live performance. In July 2025, Enragement embarked on the Fear and Raging in Las Balticas mini-tour, a three-night rampage across the Baltic states alongside fellow Finns Fearmonger. The tour cut a path through Pärnu, Estonia on July 3; Kaunas, Lithuania on July 4; and culminated at the Zombïfests metal festival in Cēsis, Latvia on July 5.

This brief but intense tour represented a critical moment. With the band having promised “plenty of new songs on the set list,” these shows were the first opportunity for audiences to experience the sound of ‘Extinguish All Existence’ in its most raw and immediate form.

There was a compelling juxtaposition in this rollout: the grand, world-ending themes of the album and the global reach of their new label were introduced in the sweat-soaked, intimate confines of clubs in Pärnu and Kaunas. It was a perfect encapsulation of the dual reality for many dedicated underground bands, who could conjure apocalyptic art while still operating on a grassroots, van-and-trailer level.

Conclusion

This tour is the calm before the storm, the first tremor before the earthquake. After nearly twenty years of relentless effort, patient refinement, and a deepening commitment to their grim artistic vision, Enragement has arrived at this moment. They have climbed the ladder of the underground, earning each step through sheer force of will and musical integrity.

‘Extinguish All Existence’ is not just their fourth album; it is the culmination of a journey, their most potent and promising statement to date. The question that remains, to be answered in the clubs of the Baltics and in the headphones of listeners worldwide, is whether this is the moment that Enragement finally carves their own undeniable and permanent scar onto the face of global death metal. All signs suggest the earth is about to shake.