Little did I know that arguably my favorite Cradle of Filth album, 1996s Dusk and Her Embrace was actually the second iteration of that album. Unbeknownst to me, before the 1996 Music for Nations version, another version of the album was fully recorded in 1995 with essentially the same line up as the band’s debut […]
Ive been a big fan of Atlanta’s Withered since 2005s Stockholm meets Mastodon lurch of Memento Mori. Even the bands foray into blacker realms with 2008s Folie Circulaire and 2010s Dualitas were impressive. Even more so since I got to hang out with and drink a beer with frontman and founder Mike Thompson back in […]
After more grindcore beginnings, one could argue that the modern deathcore movement peaked with either 2005s The Healing Process or The Ills of Modern Man, this Canadian act’s third full length album, in 2007. My vote is for the latter. But after 2009s Day of Mourning, the band split up as deathcore began to fade and wane under […]
Norway’s Blood Red Throne return with their eighth studio album. For those of you that are not familiar with this group was started by Dod (Satyricon) and Tchort (Emperor) and have been around since 1998 and they play a murderously American style of brutal old school death metal. Union of Flesh and Machine opens with “Revolution […]
I’m not familiar with the back catalog from Canada’a Forteresse other than they seem pretty well respected in the scene and I had seen them mentioned in the same breath as Neige et Noirceur, (early) Alcest. They have delivered a few albums varying between raw, minimalist black metal and more folky black metal and the songs are in […]
Over the course of three excellent albums, Australia’s Be’lakor rose to the forefront of the melodic death metal scene. Now some four years since their Of Breath and Bone album dropped, the lads return with their anticipated fourth offering, entitled Vessels. On something of a continuous hot streak and particularly in the context of the […]
When the almost 10 year old Sauna Open Air went bankrupt in 2013, the old punk capital of Finland, Tampere was to go without a hard rock/metal festival. A different organizer came in and scooped up the slot, and thus the South Park Festival was born — named after Eteläpuisto, the park it’s held in, and not the television show (though that would be an entertaining event as well!) So, third year in, how did the festival go this time around?
With last year’s Savage Land, Exhumed main main Matt Harvey and basically his Chuck Schuldiner cover band Gruesome, delivered arguably the apex early Death worship album. But at the end of my review, I wondered how the band would follow Savage Land up. Would they still basically cover Death’s first 3 albums or would they […]
Following up a classic is always difficult. Especially when that classic was 12 years in the making. Thus was the task at hand for Luc Lemay and trying to follow up 2013s Colored Sands, arguably one of the most successful death metal comebacks of all time. But Lemay has played it smart; he waited a while, and […]
I enjoyed Bostonian’s Zealotry’s 2013 debut, The Charnal Expanse. I really enjoyed Defeated Sanity’s Lille Gruber’s drum work on the album. It was some of the best of his career, regarding the progressive moments. The new Zealotry brings in Alex Zalatan, as the drummer, and couples some more session musicans, but leaves Pat Tougas intact, […]
After shifting from a gore/pure slam band into a more rounded, complete death metal band with Autopsychosis, these Russians made my 2013 year end -list in a year full of great, brutal metal. With their new album, Gravenous Hour, the band have elevated themselves once again, with an album that is sure to be considered one […]
After nearly a decade of inactivity, Novembre are back with one of 2016’s most anticipated returns. Ursa marks album number seven for the Italians and it wholeheartedly embraces everything that has made the band such a stylish international gem in the extreme metal universe. If you’ve adored the output from Carmelo Orlando and company over […]
In a short, to the point message on the band’s Facebook page, Washington’s influential black/folk metal act Agalloch have decided to end their illustrious career: “Following 20 years, 5 full length albums, many tours around the world, and numerous other recordings, John Haughm and the rest of the band (Don Anderson, Jason Walton, and Aesop […]
Kicking it since 1999, Spain’s best and most brutal band Wormed, have had their fair share of ups and downs. After several high profile demos, the band released Planisphærium in 2003. To say this album was phenomenal is an understatement. I did not find out about this gem of a band until after this album […]
Unique Leader looks to be having the same sort of outlandishly good year as it had in 2014 with the likes of Ohmnihilty, Inherit Disease, Ahtme, Omaphagia, and The Zenith Passage so far, and then you have the upcoming monster from Katalepsy still yet to come. But I’m pretty confident in stating that this will […]
The year was 2004. In Flames had released Soundtrack to Your Escape, arguably putting the final nail in the coffin of melodic death metal. A genre that had eaten itself and become synonymous with the peaking US metalcore, and the genre was now almost a parody of itself. However, there was a hero to emerge. After one EP, The Porter, 2 years earlier, Germany’s Disillusion were about to reinvigorate an entire scene with their full length debut, the aptly named Back to Times of Splendor
If Vertikal and its companion piece Vertikal II were Cult of Luna’s final, triumphant shout, then it’s poetic that silence followed afterwards. The band has created a career from the interplay between thunderous, violent peaks, and soft, hypnotic lulls. All the same, I was disappointed to learn that there’d be no more brilliant and mesmerizing […]
The lone traveler on the cover of Arktis, Ihsahn’s sixth solo release, may as well be the man himself. Ever since departing Emperor, Ihsahn has charted his own paths across rough and largely unknown terrain. Previous album Das Seelenbrechen veered off into particularly strange and challenging territory – even for me, a die-hard fan of his work […]
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it doesn’t matter – Babymetal are now the Supreme Overlords (or perhaps the Overlord Supremes) of their own Cult of Kawaii. And if you do hate ‘em, then lighten the fuck up. The absurdity of three J-pop teenyboppers fronting a metal band is too ridiculous not to love – and […]
It happens every year. In the mad shuffle to painstakingly put our year-end lists together, stuff gets missed. Whether they were sent to us after the fact, slipped through the cracks, or were simply overlooked, a number of killer releases found themselves in year-end limbo. A few of our staff compiled a list of the praise-worthy releases that missed the cut for our year-end 2015 feature, which means you should still consider them to be some of last year’s best.
Megadeth has gone through many line-ups throughout the years and mainman Dave Mustaine is no stranger to controversy. Among the classic albums, there’s been a few shadier ones, but despite everything, the band is still kicking and putting out new music. Does the engine still have any power left? We take a look at Megadeth’s latest output, Dystopia.
The fine folks at Clawhammer PR and the Fine Dude at Unspeakable Axe Records are in a giving mood. They have decided that one lucky Teethofthedivine reader is going to get a veritable swag bag of Unspeakable Axe goodies including 3 CDs, 1 Cassette, 1 vinyl record AND a damn T- shirt to boot. How Awesome is that?
By the time you read this article, California’s Absymal Dawn will be embarked on one of the year’s (if not longer) best death metal tours. They will be opening for three certifiable legends in Cryptopsy, Cannibal Corpse and Obituary. But Abysmal Down is no normal opener, a wide eyed rookie death metal act. These guys have been around since 2003. Have released 4 albums, 3 of which on metal behemoth label Relapse. So these guys DESERVE to share the stage with such seminal acts.
Horror and metal have always been gore filled bedmates and inherently related. The misanthropy the (sometimes unfortunate) misogyny, the shock value, the violence, the extremity and the allure for society’s outcasts. The relationship was perfected in 1986s Trick or Treat (not the 2007 shit fest) with Ozzy Osbourne and Gene Simmons bringing metal to the big screen.
The US and mainly fertile Floridian death metal explosion of the early 90s is stuff of legend; Death, Cynic, Atheist, Obituary, Deicide, Nocturnus, Malevolent Creation, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and the Morrisound ‘sound produced some of the best death ever, that to this day is considered seminal and whose influnce is still going well over 25 years later. Well in 1993 a band called Brutality released Screams of Anguish on label monsters Nuclear Blast, and while it arguably juuuuuust missed the genre’s peak its more classical based style insured that it rubbed shoulders with some of the classics of the day.