Martin Kanja is the vocalist, songwriter, and producer behind the moniker Lord Spikeheart. A figurehead of the African metal scene, Kanja has spent a decade honing his unique style that drags death metal’s ardent, thrashy qualities into swampier, muddier terrain. Reigning with guttural intensity over his domain, Lord Spikeheart’s sound is one of industrialized distortion and howling metal riffs sewn together with gritty experimental hip hop and noise production: here, blast beats and trap beats exist side by side, both dripping with corpse paint. Lord Spikeheart’s debut album, The Adept (2024), on his own label HAEKALU Records, released to widespread acclaim. Its harsh frequencies and phonics concatenate into an electrifying sound that is brash and confrontational in parts, and in others, murmurs beneath the surface like a sleeping eldritch god. The dark sonic world of Lord Spikeheart is offset by the themes he approaches; the songs are both political and personal, and at their core is a call for hope: “The positivity and joy is masked in a cloud of heaviness and mosh pit vibrations,” he says, “but it’s all positive.”