While I’m not totally loving Dimentianon’s (formerly known as The Forgotten) form of chaotic, garage blackened death metal, I can appreciate its DIY delivery and primal intensity for what it is. This should appeal to fans of Goatwhore and Hellhammer mixed with Mayhem/Darkthrone or demo era Anaal Nathrakh, with maybe a splattering of retro underground […]

With mysterious, esoteric cover art and inlay art, you immediately get the impression that on their third release, Chicago’s Yakuza are gunning for something really special, but unfortunately they fall victim to their own ambitions. While Samsara was a perfect mix of post rock, tech metal, Mastodon and John Coltrane, Transmutations sees the band expand […]

Here’s one of those releases that make me question Metal Blade sometimes; another angular burly hardcore act along the lines of A Life Once Lost, (former label mates) Achilles, The Minor Times, Apiary and The Handshake Murders. The Dregs is competent, heavy and angry but delivering absolutely nothing new or original. Of course, if you’re […]

Listen, I’m all for retro death metal, especially if it features Jeff Nardone of Goatlord. I’m all for reliving the past glories and throwback grit of early 90’s death metal. What I’m not for is if that throw back is a throwback to JL America death metal. Boring, lifeless, forgetful and dreary, lo-fi, mid paced […]

Despite their 25th year anniversary and stable of veteran respected death metal acts (Bolt Thrower, Vader, Amon Amarth, Cannibal Corpse, Vomitory, Fleshcrawl, God Dethroned etc) it’s bands like Winter Solstice, Machinemade God, A Love Ends Suicide, Phoenix Mourning, Neaera, If Hope Dies, The Red Death and such that seem to garner Metal Blade (and their […]

You can tell immediately from the Kristian Whalin (Emperor, At The Gates, Dark Tranquility) artwork, pentagram covered CD inlay and song titles (“Deathmask Divine”, “I Worship Only What You Bleed”, “Darkness Spawned”, “Warborn”), that media darlings The Black Dahlia Murder are on a far more serious and improved rampage than their previous effort, the aptly […]

I’ll admit to enjoying the Facedown debut, Ice Upon the Night from this relatively obscure Finnish melodic death metal act, but I’m still surprised they released a follow up on the growing Christian metal roster of Facedown, but here it is and it delivers exactly what you’d expect from their self proclaimed “Winter metal”. 11 […]

Facedown Records is quickly becoming the dominant Christian metal label, surpassing Solid State, with solid release from the likes of Seventh Star, Sleeping Giant, Inked In Blood, Impending Doom, Means, War of Ages and now Tennessse’s A Plea For Purging, who on their debut full length deliver arguably the second best metalcore record I’ve heard […]

You know it’s a slow year in Viking metal when a band from Portland, Oregon that consists of ¾ members of Fall of the Bastards on a label run by a guy in The Funeral Pyre (Prosthetic Records) delivers the best Viking metal album of the year. Truth be told though, Betwixt and Between, with […]

I’ll be the first to admit that despite the band moniker the debut from this Christian, synth filled metalcore act Dear Love: A Beatiful Discord, was a surprisingly solid debut album and the follow up, Plagues pretty much continues that trend but with a caveat. I’ll also admit that I hate gimmicky synths, especially in […]

After a measure of success with their entries into the melodic death metal genre, (Sonic Syndicate who then signed with Nuclear Blast and the well received Blinded Colony), you could forgive Pivotal for releasing yet another polished, competent but formulaic Swedish melodic death metal album. Zonaria aren’t bad, they just aren’t quite as good as […]

So if Evocation’s recent Tales From the Tomb is the best Entombed/Left hand Path homage of the last few years, with Structures of Death, Germany’s Fleshcrawl have delivered the preeminent Dismember homage album. Most death metal fans know that Fleshcrawl have been ripping off Dismember for their respectable, long but relatively undistinguished career, but on […]

French spoken, trucking themed tech/grind core from Quebec? Yup. You red that right. Musically, The Truckers are not too dissimilar from many of their Canadian peers, plying a sort of tight, complex, off kilter hardcore/grind/death metal (Ion Dissonance, Despised Icon, The End, Fuck The Facts, etc), but the whole thing is sung/growled/screamed in French, which […]

An open letter to all young American Metal bands: “ I know you like Pantera, but please stop trying to ape them and forsaking your original sound-they are gone, get over it”. Throwdown, A Perfect Murder, Lamb of God-just to name a few of the acts that seemingly thought being basically a Pantera styled cover […]

I’m sure anyone with even a passing interest in black metal is geeked for this release, especially considering how many years end lists the debut, Diadem in 12 Stars graced. Well, even with the horde of quality ambient/experimental black metal this year, from many of the genre’s bigger names (Leviathan, Deathspell Omega, Cobalt, Xasthur, Secrets […]

I think few would disagree that during the golden era of early 90’s death metal, in the Swedish/Stockholm scene, that the influence and legacy of the big four; Entombed, Dismember, Grave and Unleashed is undeniable. However, there was a second tier of talented bands that for any number of reasons (lack of promotion, style change, […]

I’m not sure why Metal Blade/Ironclad would release the debut from Buffalo’s Sons Of Azrael only a month or so before The Black Dahlia Murder’s Nocturnal drops, because its liable to steal some of Nocturnal’s thunder. Basically Sons of Azrael ply a form of modern sort of At The Gates based, death//black core that has […]

Taking more than a huge nod from Suffocation as well as the likes of Devourment, Decrepit Birth, Gorgasm and other more brutal, technical US death metal bands, Germany’s Defeated Sanity have delivered a second album of appropriately sick and gore filled technical brutality (brootek death metal?). With ultra deep, almost grindcore core styled burps layered […]

Basically mixing the churning heft of Behemoth or Vader with the cyber/industrial assault of say The Amenta, Crionics have unleashed their third album of clinical, futuristic swathe of black/death metal that’s pretty unrelenting, at times repetitively so, but still manages to literally fire on all cylinders. Of course, as with most cyber death metal (Scorngrain, […]

Uh oh. I think this one is going to ruffle a few feathers. Christian metal has slowly but surely elbowing it’s way into extreme metal, but with little success. From the early defining works of Believer to the more modern, often core based sounds of today like Becoming the Archtype and Extol, the Christians have […]

Unlike the recent album by Sweden’s Memfis who decided to deliver a sort of modernized take on Oepth, Canada’s Adytum said ‘fuck it’, and basically wrote an exact clone of Opeth’s mid era work except with harsher black metal vocals. Though that’s pretty much Adytum’s debut in a nutshell, I probably should embellish; this is […]

Holy. Fucking. Shit. Thank you Willowtip for licensing this gem this from Neurotic Readers, what was the last technical death metal album that truly changed how you viewed and listened to technical death metal? A mind altering, genre smearing album that altered the death metal landscape? For me personally, I have to go back as […]

Alaska was my 2005 album of the year, so suffice to say, the follow up, Colors had some pretty high expectations; expectations that are comfortably reached, but not quite shattered, as Colors is exactly what you’d expect from BTBAM; brilliance. One only need look at the band’s prior cover only album The Anatomy of… to […]

Much like the recent Candlelight/SOAR releases Diskreet, Rose Funeral and Whitechapel, Arizona’s Knights of the Abyss ply a form of technical, grindy, breakdowny, modern death metal, that’s to say, and I hate to use the term; deathcore, and they actually should give Job For A Cowboy (who share the same producer) a run for their […]

Citing influences such as Beherit, Von and Nifelheim, Satanic Funeral is an multinational US/Netherlands based project featuring members of Vrolok, Mord, Misanthropy and Lugubre-and if you are at all familiar with those ultra underground acts, you should enjoy Satanic Funeral and their utterly hideous and nasty raw form of old school black metal. This is […]