There was a time when Belgium’s Shiver Records/The LSP Company were prolific as heck churning out record after record of home grown talent, unusually favoring the chunky, recognizable Belgian sound such as Battalion, Insanity Reigns Supreme, Warbeast Remains, Welkin, Moker, Ordeal, The Seventh and even the odd classic release such as Axamenta’s Ever-Arch-I Tech-Ture. But I had not […]

I’m not sure what was going on over at the usually reliable Mighty Music at the end of 2014. After a couple of solid releases in Solbrud,  Planet Rain and Herod, the label sent me a slew of hard rock releases; Ruinside, Distance, 23 Acez, Annominus, Estate, Saint Rebel and such. And all of it pretty awful; Not […]

There are more than likely going to be two camps when it comes to Southern California’s hardcore bruisers Xibalba. One faction will feel their style of super down-tuned chuggtastic hardcore is the heaviest, most punishing sound on the planet and the counterpoint is that they are knuckle dragging simpletons who cant tune guitars or write songs. And while […]

There are a few similarities between death metal acts Chapel of Disease and Deserted Fear; both German, both of FDA Rekotz, both released solid debuts in 2013 and both recently released their second efforts. The only slight difference is the style of death metal each band plays. While Deserted Fear had a little more modern, chunky […]

The debut Where Distant Spirits Remain, from Glasgow’s Falloch was an interesting post rock/black metal/grey metal opus with Agalloch-ian hues. However it was the work of a duo, Andy Marshall and Scott Mclean, and Marshall since left the band (creating more atmospheric black/Celtic metal with Saor, which I highly recommend) leaving McLean to rebuild, and rebuild he has […]

I first heard England’s  Sylosis when reviewing their 2008 debut, Conclusion of an Age for Metal Maniacs. As I recall is was a pretty average Unearth/All That Remains clone, that left me with fair to middling opinion of the band. Fast forward to 2012 and the band’s third album Monolith (I missed 2011s Edge of the […]

I have reviewed both the first and second albums from Finland’s Decaying, both delivering a stout war mongering style of death metal that delivers a mix of Bolt Thrower/Hail of Bullets and Asphyx (particularity the very Van Drunen-ish is shrieks of Matias Nastolin). And the productive Fins keep producing and getting incrementally better with each release, as the […]

Few bands have elicited as much vitriol from fans as Liturgy and frontman and creator, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix. From the now infamous transcendental black metal interview to black metal manifestos, the guy has been ripped to shred on internet message boards as well as memed to death. And that’s before the guy’s music is even in the picture. 2009’s Renihilation and 2011’s Aesthetica angered black metal pundits as they arguably shaped the current trend of so-called ‘hipster black metal’ that has swatted the hornet’s nest of black metal.

Much like label and country mates Destroying Divinity, the Czech Republic’s aptly named Heaving Earth make no bones about their primary influences, and any death metal fan can quickly ascertain such simply based on the track names, album name cover art and palette. And then you press play and while the instantly recognizable throes of […]

From Germany’s creatively named new-ish label, Go Fuck Yourself Productions, comes the debut from Stockholm’s Obscyria a band trying not to completely wear  their geographical locale’s sound on their sleeve, being old school death metal, but with a bit of a blackened thrash sneer. This the kind of release that Unspeakable Axe or FDA Rekotz should have released, […]

I’ve been waiting on new material from the Czech Republic’s Morbider since 2009s When Darkness Returns, one of the better, if unheralded examples of Swedish death metal of that year (I actually didn’t hear it until a couple of years later) . And while 5 years is a long time to wait just for 4 songs on […]

As usual, here we are in 2015, and we are unearthing a few 2014 releases worth your time. Amid the many 2014 releases I overlooked is this album I randomly downloaded amid all of the digital promos we get sent having no idea about the band at all. But the internet helped me out… Apparently, despite being […]

Despite their spikey Satanic imagery and artwork, Portugal’s Martelo Negro (Black Hammer- their former moniker), present a far more varied and catchy sound on their second album  than their presentation would  have you believe. Rather than lo-fi black thrash, the band’s sound is a curiously addictive take on death n roll or black n roll […]

If you were to collect a bunch of well versed fans of death metal into a cage fight and force them come up with a solution to the following question: Which label is embracing us with some of the best death metal today? What could the answer be? Since it’s only a theoretical situation rather than a study funded by the UN, our best guess for numero uno, after duking it out ourselves, would be DARK DESCENT RECORDS. We shot a few questions at the primus motor Matt Calvert to find out what’s up.

Here’s a nice little 2014, self released gem of blackened death metal from the depths of Austin, Texas spawned from a few obscure Texas veteran acts like Disfigured, Scattered Remains and Carnal Befoulment.But the group has come together to form a pretty impressive debut album that lies somewhere between Behemoth, Morbid Angel and Goatwhore ( […]

“Listen here you beautiful bitch, I’m about to fuck you up with some truth”– Kenny Flowers (“I Can’t Believe She Got in the Van with Me”) In 2013 , I reviewed the second album ..The Dissection of Christ, from these Kansas City death metalers, it was a solid hodge-podge of death metal styles that showed some […]

2014 was  an quietly decent  year for high quality folk/viking with Eluveitie’s Origins, Crimson Shadows‘ Kings Among Men, Nothgards, Age of Pandora, Skalmond’s Með vættum, Valknacht’s Le Sacrifice d’Ymir and Equilibrium’s Erdentempel (with only Equilibrium making my 2014 year end list).  And I wish I could say that Denmark’s Vanir and their 3rd album would be included in that list but unfortunately it’s a […]

Back in the late ’90s through the mid ’00s, The End Records were one of the more innovative and progressive metal labels around. They were releasing ground breaking metal albums from acts like Arcturus, Age of Silence, Scholomance, Green Carnation and Agalloch… the list goes on. In 2004 the label released a 3-song teaser EP from one of its own, Tomer Pink (who worked for The End Records) and his project Subterranean Masquerade. It also featured Jake Depolittle, Paul Kuhr of label mates Novembers Doom, Tino Losicco of label mates Epoch of Unlight and Jason William Walton of Agalloch, also label mates.

Remember in the late ’90s and early ’00s when The End records was changing metal by releasing fresh, genre challenging invigorating and exiting bands like Nokturnal Mortum, Love History, Epoch of Unlight, Scholomance, Frantic Bleep, Novembers Doom, Agalloch, Giant Squid, Enslaved, Virgin Black, The Gathering, Sculptured, Green Carnation, Winds and even Arcturus‘s masterpiece The Sham Mirrors? My god […]

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, Canada has a killer, underrated folk viking metal scene; Battlesoul, Vesperia , Valknacht, Will of the Ancients, Valfreya, Trollwar, Nordheim, Battlesoul, and of course Blackguard are all fine acts to rival their Finnish peers. Well, poised to make a move to the top of the scene is Toronto’s Crimson Shadows […]

Since 2005 Ireland’s Primordial have become the indisputable kings of Irish metal. And not only that, you could argue that Primordial have become one of the biggest bands in metal, with past albums consistently littering year end lists whether its 2005’s watershed album, The Gathering Wilderness, 2007’s To The Nameless Dead or 2011’s Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand, the bands seems able to do no wrong in the eyes of the metal masses and media.

Not to be confused with Colorado’s tech death Execration or the many other Execrations, Norway’s Execration are an altogether different beast. Sounding very similar to country mates Obliteration, Execration play a murky, psychedelic and heavily Autopsy influenced style of death metal (also, think a nastier, dirtier version of Morbus Chron) that isn’t a quick, easy listen, but […]

So both former Cradle of Filth member Paul Allender  and lone remaining Cradle of Filth member Dani Filth released their own side project/new bands in 2014. Allender had White Empress, a strange symphonic, female fronted mash up and Dani had Devilment. Devilment features new-ish Man Must Die bassist (and now Cradle of Filth bassist) Daniel Firth,  and […]

I haven’t received any promos from Germany’s’ Bastardized Recordings in years, going back to the likes of Six Reasons to Kill, Deadsoil, Soulgate’s Dawn and Feast for the Crows metalcore days of the mid 00s. But they have been fairly busy since then, if not as productive, including the discography from homeland death metal  act […]

After the success of Death, notably Leprosy and Spiritual Healing, a number of European clones also became successful in the early ’90s. England had Cancer, Germany had Morgoth, The Netherlands had Pestilence and Asphyx, but France’s scene lagged behind a bit comparatively speaking, really only offering Massacra, Loudblast and Agressor until Mercyless entered the fray in pretty spectacular fashion in […]