There’s an old adage “You can have too much of a good thing”. And for me, that “good thing” is blackened/symphonic deathcore, and I can have as much of it as I fucking want. And Spain’s Bonecarver has delivered yet another killer addition to the genre to go with the 2022 onslaught of releases from […]

I’ve long extolled the virtues of Germany’s Disillusion on these very pages. From their breathtaking, classic debut, Back to Times of Splendor, to the divisive follow-up Gloria to the band’s comeback after a 13-year layoff in 2019s The Liberation. Well thankfully, we don’t have a long wait for them to follow up The Liberation, as […]

There have been some great Swedish /HM2 style death metal releases in 2022; Necrom, Entrails, Demonical, Katakomba, Sentient Horror, and Ripped to Shreds Disfuneral, have all released killer albums so far this year. But this autumn, a few more releases will drop and compete for your hard-earned cash. Back in September, Tampa Bay’s Carnal Ruin […]

With a name like Lightlorn ( ‘having no light’ or ‘bereft of light’) you’d think the debut EP from these Gothenburg atmospheric/post black metallers would be a truly grim, depressive affair. However, the 4 lengthy songs that comprise this EP are actually some of the most delightfully uplifting, melodic black metal I’ve heard in a […]

High the Memory, the second album from Norway’s Abyssic was one of the more underrated surprises for me back in 2019. Using a base in UK funeral doom ( My Dying Bride notably) and adding a dominant cinematic symphonic/orchestral layer, it was a superb album that made the world of lumbering doom a little more […]

As heralded by their single “Rebirth” (which appears on this album as a remixed bonus track) from earlier this year,  one of the UK’S leading deathccore/slamming death metal acts, Ingested is a band reborn. Now a three-piece consisting of drummer Lyn Jeffs, guitarist/backing vocalist Sean Hynes and vocalist Jason Evans and aided on this album […]

Despite their early impact and influence, I’ve never been more than a casual Defleshed fan, for some reason preferring Hypokras, Carnal Forge, Darkane, Dew Scented, The Crown and I.N.R.I for my hyper-speedy, thrashy, melodic-ish death metal in the late 90s early to mid-00s. I own 1997s Under the Blade and 1999s Fast Forward, but both […]

Well, Chris Reifert and co. are still at it and back with album number 9, their fourth (depending on what you view the 2015 Skull Grinder LP) after returning from an extended hiatus with Macabre Eternal in 2011, an OK if an underwhelming return to the fray. But then we got 2013s The Headless Ritual […]

When you run the risk of being simply known as “the band that Will Ramos of Lorna Shore used to sing for”, you’d better deliver on your album that you recorded after Ramos’s departure  …. And Boy to A Wake in Providence respond and let the blackened deathcore world know they are NOT simply going […]

I checked out the promo for the third album from this UK-based act as it dropped words like Nile and Behemoth as well as Roman and Greek Mythology. Sold! And I wasn’t disappointed as Ex Mortis Gloria (From Death Comes Glory) is a damn solid record. A little research into the band shows it comprises […]

It’s been five years since the Bay Area’s Acephalix released Decreation back in 2017, and there have been a few changes, as the band is now a five-piece again with a couple of lineup changes. But the sound has not changed; it’s still a filthy, death metal-based form of D-beat/crust that’s part Grave, part Nails, […]

I usually don’t review digital-only releases, but when you stumble across a symphonic tech-death supergroup based on one of the greatest video games series’ of all time, I’ll make an exception. Video gamers will recognize the moniker as one of the weapons from the Gears of War series, and indeed Hammer of Dawn is a […]

Have a seat, and grab a snack. This is gonna be a long one. Way back in 2015 I reviewed a pretty nondescript EP, Maleficium, from this New Jersey band called Lorna Shore. It was Ok, odd band name, and a few keyboards, but nothing really stood out. The same can be said for the […]

When I blindly downloaded the promo for the second album from Turkey’s Inhuman Depravity, I was fully expecting an utterly ‘broodle’ death metal onslaught of Comatose Records proportions. what I got was a far more varied and surgical old-school technical death metal record that reminded me if bands like Suffocation, Deeds of Flesh, and in […]

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I blindly hit ‘play’ on Bexadde, on Germany’s FDA Records after getting the CD in the mail along with the new Slaughterday. With that moniker, I was maybe expecting some fuzzed-out stoner doom? But I certainly not modern atmospheric/post-black metal, not exactly what FDA Records is known for. […]

I have no excuse why it has taken me to review the debut album from Baltimore’s Greylotus. I got nothing. It’s even sadder considering, I listen to it a lot, and it’s going to be a clear-cut album of the year contender for me, so let’s get to it. Basically, Greylotus’s Dawnfall is if you […]

For almost a decade, German duo Slaughterday has been rendering their Autopsy worshiping ( Slaughterday is a song from the Mental Funeral album) tones with  3 albums and a couple of EPs. And with album number 4, even with the word ‘doom’ in the title, they continue that trend with another killer album. With an album […]

Can someone in the Norfolk (UK) area please go and check on NRE? Seriously, from what I’m hearing on his sixth and final album under his And Now The Owls Are Smiling moniker, he must have undergone some drastically emotional shit since 2021s Dirges, a despondent but still atmospheric and at times melodic black metal […]

I randomly grabbed the 2018 release, Hard 2 Kill, in a used bin back in 2018, and was pleasantly surprised with the Southern groovy take on death metal/thrash from these Texans. But I never really appeared on my radar again until I saw the fucking epic album cover for their newest effort, and thought “Oh […]

Hilning is the solo project of former Afgrund vocalist/guitarist, Aldriendir (aka Andreas Baier), and as if you could not tell from the cover art, it’s a radical departure from Afgrund’s savage, Nasum-styled grindcore. Unfortunately, where Afgrund kicked out some pretty goddamn solid material in their 3 album existence from 2007-2012, I’m not sure Aldriendir’s foray […]

Listen, I’ve been excited about a fair number of reunions and comebacks over the years: Gorefest, Carcass, Disillusion, At The Gates, and recent ones like …And Oceans and Naglfar. But I have to admit, after a 17 year wait, news of the return of Tennessee’s Epoch of Unlight had me more thrilled than all of […]

While a Christian metal label, Rottweiler Records has been home to slightly more unorthodox Christian metal, mostly straying away from the heavily populated metalcore/deathcore realms reserved for Facedown and Strikefirst records (that said, the recent Voluntary Mortification does fit in that genre). They have been able to locate Christian brutal death metal bands ( Taking […]

The 2020 solo debut, Verisaarna, from Hex Inferi ( ex Horna), was a blistering, icy cold blast of classic black metal in the Marduk-ian realm of relentlessness, with some innate Finnish nastiness thrown in. And while Kataklysmi is not quite as palpably frosty, it delivers much of the same frozen swathes of black metal, maybe […]

Like The Mist From the Mountains and I Am The Night from earlier this year,  Pestilent Hex is a Finnish symphonic black metal supergroup  of sorts. However, this particular project is from a duo  (L.L and M.M) who also perform in Desolate Shrine, Ordinance, Convocation and Corpsessed. And whereas the the two projects above have […]

You’d think an epic, symphonic death metal band named after Icarus’s father would deliver a Greek mythology-based album. But what we have here is a concept album about Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated, 1845 artic expedition where two ships, Erebus and Terror, and their crews of 129 went missing (also the loose basis of the excellent […]