Though 2023 is in our rearview mirror, there’s still a slew of quality late 2023  releases lingering that deserve your attention. One such release is the third album from Belgium’s Carnation, who burst onto the scene with the impressive debut Chapel of Abhorrence back in 2018 and followed it up with the equally impressive Where […]

Germany’s Atronos is one of the many projects that feature vocalist ‘Baptist’ who also serves in two other great German black metal acts Mavorim and Eisenkult. Eisenkult used to be his outlet for more triumphant medieval black metal with albums like 2020’s Gedenken wir der Finsternis, but in 2022 Eisenkult did a split demo with his […]

Italy’s Drown In Sulfur got off to a hot start in the blackened deathcore genre with various EPs including the excellent Blackwind EP, which I really enjoyed and own, and I thought the band was ready to blow up. Then the band literally blew up shortly after with drummer Domenico Tamila kicking out all of […]

Impalement is the Swiss, one-man project from Beliath (who also helps out with Germany’s Nargaroth for live shows).  But unlike the other recent Swiss one-man project I reviewed, Felonie, which was more melodic atmospheric black metal, this, as the apt album title states, is blistering, black/death metal. The Dawn of Blackened Death is the second […]

Cripes, I haven’t had an album make me scratch my head as much as this in quite some time. OWDWYR is a technical death metal/grind/djent experimental metal trio (aided by a literal army of guest drummers for almost every track- including Kevin Paradis of Benighted and Kenny Grohowski of Imperial Triumphant) that utilizes classical and […]

Formerly known as ‘Gyze‘, and with four albums under that moniker from 2013-2019, this Japanese melodic death metal band has themed their music as ‘Samurai metal’, using copious Eastern instrumentation and influences (dragon flute, erhu, shamisen, etc) and visuals to bolster their energetic, shredding take on melodic death metal. And now armed with a new […]

France’s Embrace Your Punishment started as a pretty standard hardcore Hatebreed-ish band with some death metal hues back in 2014s Honor Before Glory, but has got progressively heavier with 2019s Nameless King, especially vocally. And now with album number 3, Made of Stone, are an absolute beast of a band that blends hardcore, brutal death […]

Jesus Fucking Christ. Has it really been 20 years since Israel’s Nail Within released their self-titled debut? That was three jobs ago, I was a baby; only 27 years old, and my daughter was only 3. She’s now graduated college and had a job for almost 2 years….FUCK! I mean the absolutely killer tracks “Dirty […]

I’m new to Spanish veterans Æolian, but after hearing Echoes of the Future, they, like the recent KING I covered, are one of those bands where I instantly pre-order the album and then go back and purchase the entire back catalog. Fuck this is good. I mean from start to finish, every note and exquisitely […]

The last time I did a review of a Christmas album, it was Majestica’s take on Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. A largely successful, fun, power metal album with plenty of Xmas cheer and classic Xmas hymns and elements. The Black Nativity is the complete opposite. And not in a good way. Illinois Christian black metallers […]

What’s in a name? Well, I have to admit I’m shallow enough I passed up this promo when it first showed up in my inbox as the name Deathcode Society did little to draw my interest. Then, while listening to a symphonic black metal playlist on Spotify, the track “Scolopendra”, played, and my attention was […]

If you’ve read this site for any amount of time you know I’m a sucker for 90s-styled symphonic black metal. And here is the debut from German newcomers Aphelium Aeternum and their excellent debut Dark Interstellar Mysteries, which delivers a perfect rendering of the genre, imbuing the classic acts like Dimmu Borgir, Obtained Enslavement, Old […]

Stortregn’s (‘downpour’) development from a melodic black metal band into a more technical, shredding death metal band with a few black metal elements has been a splendid development, and fittingly with the style shift, the band found themselves on the perfect label, The Artisan Era, literally the preemptive label for shreddy/melodic, sometimes symphonic tech death/black […]

Unique Leader Records? Check. Caelen Stokkermans cover art? Check. Blackened Technical deathcore? Check. Cool band moniker? Check. Christian Donaldson (Cryptopsy) mix/master? Check Album title I can identify with? Check. Yeah, I’m definitely reviewing and digging this. Portugal’s The Voynich Code is named after the Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious 15th-century codex full of images and writings […]

Around since the early 90s, main man Ares and his band Aeternus delivered some pretty classic, folky black metal albums early on in their career with Beyond the Wandering Moon and ….And So The Night Became. They were also one of the first bands to blend death and black metal and have the term ‘blackened […]

Man, as much as I love reliable old-school school, consistent bands that I’m familiar with and know what I’m getting with every album, I love discovering ‘new’ bands.  Whether the band is brand new on the scene or in the case of Australia’s King, a veteran band with some household names and two prior albums […]

This fall/early winter, a group of excellent Swedish-styled/HM-2 death metal releases will be vying for your attention and hard-earned cash. Belgium’s Carnation,  Prosthetic Records’ 2023 foray into the genre, Xorsist, Australia’s The Plague, reliable German vets Endseeker, and the best of the bunch, the long overdue second album from Sweden’s Gravestone. The 2018 debut, Sickening, […]

I kinda dug, These Nameless Worlds, the debut EP from this atmospheric/melodic black metal duo from Sweden. Despite the light-less moniker, it was a cosmic-themed, uplifting, bright take on the genre with some very pleasant melodies in the vein of Ghostbath, Vinland, Numeron, and Vallendusk. Well here is the full-length debut on the very fitting […]

I grabbed the prom for this Swiss one-man project as the moniker, album title and French song titles screamed Antiq Records-styled medieval, epic, and atmospheric black metal (i.e Passéisme, Veheménce). And I wasn’t too far off. The brainchild of one Marc Dalton (also of the solid melodic black metal band Tyrmfar, who released a fine […]

So here it finally is…. the new Suffocation album, and notably the first release without original vocalist Frank Mullen, since the band formed in 1990. While other members (other than the other lone original member, guitarist Terrance Hobbs), have come and gone, Frank and Terrance have been there since day one, so this album is […]

So this fall sees a couple of Matt Schott (Valdur, Sxuperion) projects drop new albums. There’s a disgusting new Cabinet EP and this project he has with his former cohort in Weverin, named Oreamnos. I covered the prior Oreamnos release, Into the Night, and it was as I was expected considering Schott’s (who does drums […]

I’m surprised this project didn’t get more attention earlier this autumn. It is a project formed from the ashes of Cruish-Nir, which was Romanian lyricist/conceptualist Valentin Untaru and multi-instrumentalist Robert Cotoros. However, after the passing of Cotoros in 2020, Untaru resurrected the project but gathered some well-known musicians to bring his lyrics and concepts to […]

Even though it has been 7 long years since Poland’s experimental black metal act Furia released Księżyc milczy luty back in 2016, the sexy ass song “Zwykłe czary wieją” still gets a lot of airtime and kept the band on my radar over the years. So I was delighted when Huta Luna showed up out […]

For my real, actual paying job, I do a fair bit of travel and on said travel, I meet some interesting folks. Some good, some bad, some eccentric. What has always been consistent is metal heads, when they identify each other in the wild, generally get along and have a good time. It’s just kind […]

Listen, I’ll keep this short, sweet, and brutal, much like Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch, the fourth album from Austria’s Distaste. Want a 14-song, 29-minute gut punch of HM2-tuned Nasum and Rotten Sound-styled grindcore? Just fucking get this. From start to finish, Der Ertraeger und das Fleisch (“The Yielder and the Flesh”?) is a face-ripping, […]