I’m excited to be reviewing Windswept’s latest release, A Sign of the Cloven Hoof. I didn’t know new material was being released until recently, but as soon as I found out about it, I jumped on it! After reviewing last year’s The Devil’s Vertep, I was keen to get into this year’s release as well.

Coming in at five tracks, it’s brutal, ruthless, and aggressive sounding. It sits in a black metal realm that has the rawness of the ’90s but with more speed than many bands of that era. The songs all flow in a relentless and raw fashion, with plenty of aggression and intensity. The epic of the album is the first one, “Behind the Masks of Piety,” clocking in at just over 11 minutes. It’s raw, demonic, and somehow groovy. The rawness doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad quality, as the recordings themselves are professionally done, but they’ve still managed to capture that certain edge that black metal is known for. All the while, the band has a certain live quality, with instrumental sections that allow your mind to wander and get lost within the chordal melodies. On the first track, I noticed something that might have been an accordion holding long, drawn-out notes. Even though its part was small, it still added a lot to the overall feeling of the song.

A few things that stood out to me were the two different two-note chromatic melodies in two different songs. I first heard it in “Behind the Masks of Piety”: a lower-then-higher note sequence that had a head-bobbing groove to it. The second time was in “Thieves of Stars,” but this time the notes were reversed, with the higher one first and the lower one second, also set to a different, heavy, and fitting groove. I actually pulled out the guitar for this one because it made me wonder if it was the same thing but reversed. It turns out it’s not the same thing reversed, but two different sets of chromatic notes that are quite far apart from each other. Nonetheless, working it out on guitar made it an interesting thing to play and made me wonder how they pulled it off in the studio.

The drums are metronomic and precise while adding to the feel of the guitar riffs with different fills throughout the songs.

There’s a bit of an abrupt ending to the album with “Towards the Abandoned Church,” which didn’t feel as conclusive as I tend to prefer in albums, but it was still an ending. With track titles like “Buried Face Down” and “Goat-Footed,” however, a sudden ending doesn’t necessarily come as a surprise. The sudden ending feels like a sudden death, which may be the point.

I’m quite fond of the album artwork. It kind of resembles a patch, and I could see it looking good on a hat or jacket. The intricately designed Windswept logo looks the same as it did on the last album, The Devil’s Vertep (2025), with the moon, castle, and branches. It also has a character riding on what might be a toad while carrying a moon in his bag and hooking onto stars—possibly stealing them, just like in the song “Thieves of Stars.”

As the feedback fades, I’ll admit it took me a few listens to fully get into A Sign of the Cloven Hoof, but I found that the more I listened to it, the more I liked it, earning it the status of one of my top picks of 2026. To me, the album ended up feeling short and to the point: press play, ferocious black metal attack, and get out. It’s the kind of album that leaves you wanting to go back and listen again because it’s short enough that you are left wanting more, but long enough to be a full album. The combination of the album’s rawness, black metal, and surprising amount of groove in the tracks makes for a worthwhile album, and I would recommend it to any black metal fan. It’s definitely making my personal black metal playlist.