- Artist: Netherwilds
- Album: Peasant Rising
- Label: King Volume Records
- Release Date: October 9, 2026
- Genre: Avant-Garde Metal
Every so often a record drops that leaves you staring at your speakers wondering what just happened, only to hit play again before the confusion even fades.
Netherwilds’ Peasant Rising is exactly that kind of record.
The closest I can get to describing it is Mr. Bungle colliding head on with Nine Inch Nails while Monty Python narrates the whole thing as a medieval peasant revolt. Even that falls short of covering what’s actually going on here.
The project comes from Tokyo Police Club’s David Monks, working through his grime covered alter ego Worm Chewer, and what could have stayed a goofy internet bit instead turns into a fully realized musical universe.
And it gets strange in a hurry.
Thrash, industrial metal, hardcore, punk, doom and medieval folk all get thrown into the same pot across 22 tracks. Nine brief interludes called Scrolls stitch the songs together and keep the story moving, so the whole thing plays more like one long medieval odyssey than a standard tracklist.
Usually that many interludes would kill a record’s momentum. Not here. They’re part of the ride, feeding you just enough plot before dropping you back into whatever musical madness Netherwilds has cooked up next.
This is where Peasant Rising truly separates itself. It refuses to settle into a single lane.
Helm Yeah barrels along with frantic, absurd energy. Dungeon Song swings between folky passages and far heavier terrain. The Fall feels grander and more theatrical, Heretic veers off in its own direction entirely, and by the time Wickermech shows up late in the album, Netherwilds is still finding ways to push the concept into stranger, heavier territory.
Somehow none of it reads as a jumble of random ideas.
There’s a Mr. Bungle style unpredictability to how the sound can flip without warning. Elsewhere the album carries that mechanical, unsettling edge that makes Nine Inch Nails so compelling, right before Monks veers off into absurd medieval banter or a song fixated on peasants, armor, dungeons or a missing goat.
That’s the moment the Monty Python comparison really clicks. The record knows exactly how ridiculous its world is and leans all the way into it anyway.
Still, Peasant Rising is more than a bit.
Buried inside the medieval chaos is a story about people at the bottom who are done being ignored. Hunger, labor, class and inequality run through the whole narrative, just filtered through peasants, kings, castles and an increasingly furious Worm Chewer.
That balancing act might be the album’s greatest trick. It can get a laugh out of you without ever cheapening the music.
A handful of tracks also stand strong outside the concept itself. Ballad of Sir Gregory is weirdly catchy, Siege Proof Hovel is pure absurd fun, and Return the Goat lands like the inevitable payoff to everything Netherwilds has been building.
Above all, Peasant Rising never flinches from being odd.
Plenty of albums blend genres. This one feels like Netherwilds loaded every genre into a medieval catapult just to watch where the pieces landed.
By all logic it shouldn’t hold together this well.
Peasant Rising is chaotic, heavy, funny, theatrical and fully locked into its own insanity. It’s the rare album where describing it to a friend is nearly as fun as actually hearing it.
And somehow, it’s genuinely great.
9/10
