Over the past decade vocalist Martin Kanja, AKA Lord Spikeheart, has become a figurehead of the burgeoning Kenyan metal scene, cultivating a distinctive blend of guttural yawps, screeching screams and gravelly rap verses that seep menacingly through head-banging instrumentals. 

Recently released via his HAEKALU records Lord Spikeheart’s debut album The Adept is an incandescent new frontier in extreme music critically acclaimed from prestigious media outlets such as The Guardian, Pitchfork, BBC Radio, Arte, Dazed, The Fader, NTS, Crack, Die Zeit and The Quietus. The list of collaborators is an inspired one — Cardopusher/Safety Trance, Fatboi Sharif, Brodinski, and Backxwash are some of Kanja’s guests — but The Adept never feels like anything less than something only Lord Spikeheart could have made. It’s the sound of an atom of the soul being split, unleashing an eldritch new energy.