One of the better and most consistent band currently atop the Swedish death metal revival is Germany’s Revel In Flesh. As prolific as they are awesome, the band is now four albums in, in just 6 years, each as good as the last. The latest release, Emissary of All Plagues, was released late last year on Cyclone Empire and sees the band

As I still wade through 2016’s releases, I try to review stuff that I liked, was worth my time or an actual CD was sent. One such release that crossed all three boxes was the debut full length album from Finland’s Illusions Dead. With an odd moniker, generic art and the dreaded black/death metal tag, […]

So Maurizio Iacono and his Kataklysm crew are back with album number 3 of his Roman themed, epic, symphonic death metal project, Ex Deo. And while album number 2, Caligula was better than the debut, Romulus, and album number 3 is similarly incremental in its improvement, I’m still not enamored with a project that I really […]

I have reviewed both of Hellmouth’s prior albums here. And the Detroit band showed great development from 2009s Destroy Everything, Worship Nothing to 2011s Gravestone Skylines, so I was really hoping for another leap in quality for album number three. And while the band seemed to have matured and toned things down a bit there, […]

New Zealand’s Ulcerate apparently are far more influential than they know. While Gorguts gets the lions share of the credit for the churning, murky atonal style of off kilter death metal, Ulcerate were 3 albums in before Colored Sands and Gorguts‘ return. Other fine bands like Zhrine, Zealotry, Miserist, Construct of Lethe, Ara, Artificial Brain, Mitochondrion and […]

I’m far from an Immolation fanboy. In fact, I’m a real late bloomer when it comes to these guys. It wasn’t until I recently (2011) picked up 1999s Failures For Gods that I started to get an appreciation for the band, picked up the back catalog and looked forward to each new release. And I […]

I’m not super familiar with the German brutal/slam death metal scene. I’ve only heard one band/album and it’s Architect of Dissonance‘s Realm of the Deviant Throne, and that was a mighty fine slab of slam. So when the third album from Germany’s Arcanius showed up, a band name I heard mentioned in the same breath […]

I’ve never been a fan of instrumental metal. And I’m not a huge fan of EPs either. But here is Australia’s Miserist to make me eat crow with a debut 6 song EP, of flat out nasty, atonal, crumbling instrumental death metal that really kinda blew me away. With clear reference points to the likes […]

I heard about this band and album from one of Trever Strnad’s posts over at Metal Injection about albums he is liking, it’s always a good read and full of bands I already know and some I don’t. Bullcreek was one I didn’t know, so I checked it out. Named after a haunted Dutch lake […]

It’s been 15 years since I reviewed an album from Indiana’s war mongering Invasion. It was 2002s Bezerk Artillery Barrage and it was for Digitalmetal.com. It was a solid release of death metal and one of the first, if not the first US based band I hard heard utilizing a Swedish HM boss/Sunlight guitar tone. I […]

I’ll get right to it- Indiana’s Invasion have been around a while, plying their war themed death metal since 1999. They started as a more Swedish styled band and really got my attention with 2002s Bezerk Artillery Barrage, one of my early reviews back in the digital metal.com days. At the time, a US band using the Stockholm sound was virtually unheard of. They followed it up with 2010 Orchestrated Kill Maneuver, another slab of Swedish styled chainsaws. But then the band went quiet for a while. 8 years later we have Destroyers of Mankind and the band has now leaning on their American heritage for a far more USDM styled sound. I caught up with Peter Clemens Invasion founder and a busy man involved with many other projects.

After a solid self released debut, Bedlam, back in 2015, North Carolina’s war mongering blackened thrash act Suppressive Fire under went some line up changes and shuffling and got themselves signed to Virginia’s Lost Apparition Records. And now they have released album number 2 and it is yet another solid offering of black/thrash metal with […]

One of the more revered names in European brutal death metal, and the primary name in Maltese death metal, Beheaded have been around since the mid 90s and have released 4 fine albums of brutal/technical death metal, with a near classics in 1998s Perpetual Mockery and 2002s Recounts of Disembodiment.  I have not heard 2012s […]

Coming from the school of bad band names, baring the ambiguous black/death metal tag AND sharing the band name with another  fellow French act, Derealized had the cards stacked against them from the get go. But being the consummate professional I am, and considering this label gave some solid release from Stangala, Red Dawn, Sound of […]

Lord K Phillipson, the founder of The Project Hate MCMXCIX, is and has always been one of the most outspoken and opinionated dudes in metal. Ever since we started conversing around 2003s Hate, Dominate, Congregate, Eliminate in the Digitalmetal.com days. From the internet, labels to illegal downloads, The man has always had something to say. And right now he has a lot to talk about as the The Project Hate collective has just unleashed their 11th album, Of Chaos and Carnal Pleasures to the masses. Amd yet again the release is a fan funded, digital only release as Lord K continues to spurn the industry and record labels.

Here is one of those releases that makes me pull my hair out. I got the promo late, after my year end list was almost complete, and it’s good enough that it was on and off my 2016 year list, but ultimately barely didn’t make it, and now whenever I listen to it, I wish […]

We are in that weird time of the metal press cycle where I am are still filtering through late 2016 releases and starting to get inundated with 2017 releases, which is a shame as 2016 still has some gems that needed to be heard and covered. One such release is the second release from Virginia’s […]

Aided by the whimper of Whitechapel’s Mark of the Blade, once the genre’s flagbearer,  deathcore appears to be on a hard downswing. Even for me, a staunch fan of the genre, other than a hand full of EPs (Falsifier, Pathways) little has really blown me away recently or even over the last year or so. But here […]

I have it on good authority from some Minnesota pals, that Hate Beast are a well respected, rising band on the Minneapolis scene. And I have no issue with that intel, but if I’m being honest Hate Beast are not doing a lot for me. First off, if you are called Hate Beast, I expect something […]

Despite coverage of this long running Polish act’s last two albums right here at TOTD, I have never heard this band’s take on synth laden, progressive doom/death/black metal. While researching and reading the promo materials, I see Opeth name dropped quite a bit, and to some extent there is some Opeth in here with light […]

I still feel bad about the review I gave Krypts a while back, especially considering how consistent and brilliant Dark Descent Records has been over the years. So I decided to go back and check out the label’s other late 2016 release from US sort of super group, Ruinous. Formed by a trio of guys who […]

When Dan Swano says “One of the best SweDeath projects I have come across in 20 years. The perfect blend of all the highlights from the Swedish scene from 89 to 91. Truly awesome!”, I buy instantly and listen later. And having mastered this release from Sentient Horror (with  mixing assistance from Damian Herring of Horrendous), […]

Back in my early reviewing days, I was all over ‘beauty and the beast’ metal; gloomy goth/doom death metal mixing death metal vocals and angelic female vocals. The likes of Thalarion, The Gathering, Lacuna Coil, To Elysium, Tragodia, Beseech, Draconian, Seventh Moon, The Provenance, Alas and such were my jams. A couple of bands recently […]

Back in 2009 Long Island’s  Painted In Exile released a killer 3 song EP called Revitalized. Riding the popularity of bands like of Between the Buried and Me, Protest the Hero, The Human Abstract, Periphery, Born of Osiris etc, the band was a experimental fusion of shredding metalcore, deathcore, mathcore, jazz, prog metal and even

I usually know exactly what I am getting with any Comatose albums sent to me for review. But whoa, I wasn’t expecting the sheer nastiness and brutality that Ritual Theophagy, the second album from Italy’s Blasphemer dropped on me.  Despite being familiar with plenty of other brutal Italian death metal like Logic of Denial, Hour of Penance, […]