FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  GOD DETHRONED Release Furious Single & Music Video “Rat Kingdom”. Watch “Rat Kingdom” Here Four long years after the release of their highly acclaimed album “Illuminati,” Dutch black/death metal icons GOD DETHRONED descend from the shoals of silence with their brand new offering, The Judas Paradox, due out on September 6, 2024, through Reigning […]

Henry Kane (AKA Jonny Petterson from Wombbath) has released two fine grindcore/crust albums under this Poltergeist-named project; 2017s Den förstörda människans rike, and 2020s appropriately named Age of the Idiot. Both delivering furious, Nasum-ish-styled Swedish grind/crust. However, his third release is a completely different beast altogether. and you should probably brace for it a little bit. […]

Every so often I crave unadulterated brutality; Just a break from the keyboards, atmospherics, and moods my other favorite genres provide. And when I’m in such a mood I simply go and look for what Comatose Music has sent into the promos, as they are predictable and reliable when it comes to such music. Comatose […]

UK epic doom pagans SOLSTICE are setting their signatures under a multi-album deal with Prophecy Productions on this longest day of the year on the northern half of the globe.SOLSTICE will release their fourth album via the label and have already been confirmed for this year’s edition of Prophecy Fest. SOLSTICE comment: “We are heartened and honoured to be working with Prophecy – a label whose discernible courage […]

From the 2007 tech death debut, Of Fracture and Failure, New Zealand’s Ulcerate has been one of the death metal’s most consistently elite bands with 5 albums since. The band has evolved from the pure tech death of the debut into a murky, dissonant, almost black death band (they are on Debemor Morti – a […]

Devourer of All is the second album from Belgian black metal band Nyrak, (I could not find who or what a ‘Nyrak‘ is) a new band to me, but based on this excellent second effort they will be a regular band in my playlist and a band with a bright future. Playing a blend of […]

Watch “Black Tears (Remaster 2024)” HERE Century Media Records and InsideOutMusic have recently announced the upcoming “First Chapter” of a comprehensive catalog reissue campaign for legendary and groundbreaking Death Metallers EDGE OF SANITY as well as versatile Prog/Hardrock outfit NIGHTINGALE, who were both fronted by Swedish vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and acclaimed metal producer Dan Swanö (OPETH, […]

Body Count, Kerry King, Eluveitie and Thy Art Is Murder will be performing at Finland’s legendary midsummer metal festival, Nummirock! Finland’s most legendary metal festival Nummirock will take place for the 38th time in Kauhajoki, Finland from 19-22 June 2024. This year’s performers from abroad: Body Count (US), Kerry King (US), Thy Art Is Murder (AU), Suffocation […]

Widely regarded as legends in the style, Dutch death/doom metal band Officium Triste have mastered the art of playing emotive yet elegant music and have honed their sound even more on their seventh full length album. ‘Hortus Venenum’ is a special album as it celebrates the band’s 30th year anniversary and it’s remarkable that even […]

Thanks to this YouTube group, I spent much of 2023 discovering newer symphonic black metal, or at least releases in the genre that aren’t from the golden age, or releases that somehow I completely missed from 2010 on. I found superb bands like Spain’s Ensom, Canada’s Obscuris Romancia, Russia’s Skylord, Cuba’s Mephisto, Finland’s Shade Empire, […]

18 years, 12 albums, 9 labels, 8 vocalists. You have to hand it to the lone remaining founding member/ drummer Dave Astor; he is certainly persistent and keeps shuffling lineups and releasing albums on multiple labels, even with all the above he’s seemingly settled on a somewhat stable lineup for a few albums now (Obie […]

XASTHUR release new single ‘Selling Yourself to Die’ taken from forthcoming new album “Disharmonic Variations” XASTHUR ‘Selling Yourself to Die’ taken from the album “Disharmonic Variations” https://youtu.be/iaCb9b2CHlI XASTHUR comment: “Giving too much of yourself, or whatever you have, and receiving very little in return”, mastermind Scott Conner writes. “It means not being able to live any kind of […]

The last Christian metal record I covered was Voluntary Mortification‘s Suffer to Rise back in 2020, which also happened to be Rottweiler Records, which is fast becoming the premier label for extreme Christian Music with bands like A Hill to Die Upon,  Death Requisite, xDOULOSx, Krig, Desolate Tomb, Symphony of Heaven and such, much like […]

Mining-obsessed German duo Dauþuz (‘Death’) has been on my radar for a while now. I initially heard them on their third album, Monvmentvm in 2019, and then in 2021, they crept onto my year-end list with Vom schwarzen Schmied. I wondered how they would, like other specifically themed bands (i.e. Alestorm) how they would continue […]

I grabbed the promo for this release because A) it was on Antiq Records, home of the finest medieval black metal, and B) the band moniker reminded me of French folk metal act Boisson Divine, whose La Halha I reviewed back in 2020, and rather enjoyed. Well, lo and behold Moisson Livide (‘Angry/Livid Harvest’) is […]

Despite being around since 2016, Beneath the Blazing Abyss is the Finnish band’s debut and boy, is it an excellent, pummeling example of death/doom metal that is a very, very impressive first effort. If you enjoy mid-tempo trundling death with sprinkles of doom like Temple of Void, Grave, Malignant Altar, Vore, Hooded Menace, Frozen Soul […]

I don’t know how I missed the debut of this project formed by Mark Reed, keyboardist from Winterfylleth, one of the UK’s very best black metal exports of the last 15 years. They released an album in 2022 called Take Up My Bones, which I shall immediately be procuring after hearing Untouched by Fire. Like […]

Although one of the USA’s early purveyors of European symphonic black metal in the late 90s and early 00s along with Dragonlord, Scholomance, Dreamscapes of the Perverse, Epicurean, Venificum, Santus, and such, Austin TX’s Vesperian Sorrow and most of those listed) never quite garnered a ton of attention. The Europeans just did it better with […]

Non Stop Ruthless Crushing …..what???? I feel like there’s another word that was forgotten here. Anxiety? Diarrhea? Parental disappointment? I keed,  I keed What we have here is a re-release of a 2023 effort from this Texas act formed by Jason Ramsey (notably from Baton Rouge’s Suture, who released solid albums on Deepsend Records, Unmatched […]

Synestia is a new symphonic deathcore duo consisting of Minnesota’s Sam Melchior (all instruments, writing) and Finland’s Ville Hokkanen (vocals). In 2022 they released their fantastic debut album, Malificium, but it was digital only and got kind of bulldozed by that year’s slew of stellar releases in the genre from Shadow of Intent,  Worm Shepherd, […]

Listen, I was Korpiklaani fanboy for many years loving the band’s boozy folk metal anthems like “Beer, Beer” and “Happy Little Boozer”, but somewhere around 2008s Korven Kuningas up to 2015s Noita I started losing interest in the band and their albums. The band seemed to get a bit of a hangover, lose their fun […]

At first glance, album number 13 from one of death metal’s true institutions Deicide, appears to be yet another by-the-numbers Deicide album that Bentons (yes I used it as a verb), blasphemes and blasts its way through another effort of Christ-hating death metal. And to some extent it does. It is most certainly a Deicide […]

This spring, two US-based, keyboard-heavy, melodic death metal bands will be releasing their second albums respectively. One, Philadelphia’s Malphas with Portal (via M-Theory Audio), and this album from Seattle’s more old-school influenced Veriteras. And it’s not even close to who the winner is as The Dark Horizon is absolutely stunning.  Part of my enjoyment of […]

4 years ago I reviewed the debut album, Decay from Glasgow’s Necrocracy and it was a rough and ready, solid release of no-frills, burly black metal. And then out of the blue, the band emails me and tells me about their new digital and cassette-only release they are dropping. So apparently the material on Predestiny […]

Remember bands like Nails, All Pigs Must Die, Trap Them and other Southern Lord bands of the mid 00s? That grimy, downturned, feedback laced Swedish death metal-meets hardcore and grind/d-beat sound that Gatecreeper , Fuming Mouth and such expanded on more recently? Well, the UKS Mastiff is here to take you back to that with […]