Can someone explain to me how Shadow of Intent is unsigned? Especially considering the absolute proliferation of the symphonic/blackened deathcore genre of late? Are the band members complete dicks? Are they independently wealthy? Do they hate labels? Imperium Delirium is the band’s 5th self-released effort, their third after dropping the Halo video game-inspired themes from […]
Judging art is, by it’s very nature, a subjective endeavor. Anyone who says they can look at any work, no matter the medium, on a purely objective basis is either A) a liar, or B) someone you probably don’t wanna find yourself stuck in a conversation with at a dinner party. Art should not be […]
Canada’s most extreme metal band, Cryptopsy returns with their 9th full-length album, An Insatiable Violence. I have been a fan since the very early days. When I joined Internal Bleeding in 1994, Cryptopsy were just gaining steam, and we played a string of shows together with them in Canada and some fests here in the […]
Uhhhhhhhhh yeah so look, I can’t really know what it’s like to write and release albums for the same band for 30+ years like Jonas Renske and Anders Nystrom of Katatonia have. Sure, the pair have taken the band on a number of artistic and stylistic twists and turns along the way to keep things […]
Never question my commitment to metal. I wrote this review while sitting at my hotel desk while on vacation. Sure, the weather was awful, but I was at Maryland Death Fest, babe. And while my right wrist was annoyingly adorned with all the wristbands one could imagine, I wanted to make sure I conveyed the […]
I should not like Sleep Token.. Thanks to my bastid friend, Graham (Deepsend Records), who recently sent me this band to check out as he had recently started to like this band. He actually told me, “Frank, you’re probably not going to like this”. Not only did I love this new album, Even In Arcadia […]
After reforming after 18 years in 2020 and releasing one of the best reunion albums of recent memory with Cosmic World Mother, Finland’s enigmatic and genre-shifting…And Oceans wasted little time in releasing the follow-up, As In Gardens, So In Tombs, a mere 2 years later. And as I said in my review of As In […]
Ghost Bath hath returned with Rose Thorn Necklace, which is my second favorite type. They went hard this time on those DSBM vocals, as the torture, not quite Silencer-level shrieks, can be heard throughout the first real track, “Rose Thorn Necklace.” What stands out immediately is the production, highlighting the guitars, front and center. It’s […]
Personally, I feel like we are in a new golden era of metalcore/deathcore/death metal female vocalists. Sure, the path was forged by the likes of Dawn Crosby (Fear of God), Karen Crisis (Crisis), Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy), Krista Curry (Landmine Marathon), Laura Nichol and Grace Perry (Light This City), Maria Kolokouri (Astarte), Courtney LaPlante (Iwrestledabearonce […]
My fall down the Tech-Death rabbit hole continues. It’s been a wild ride, and it seems to have no end because another killer band has come across my radar. They are called Changeling, and this is a new project from Tom “Fountainhead” Geldschläger. Most recently he wrote “Weltseelee”, the 15-minute epic that he composed for […]
UK’s underrated Cancer return with their seventh full-length album, Inverted World. I saw Cancer on their US tour in 1991 in support of their second album, Death Shall Rise, which is still their best album, and with James Murphy on guitar nonetheless. After their third album, The Sins of Mankind, in 1993, the band, as […]
It took 6 years, but we finally have a new ADE album, their 5th, titled Supplicium (‘Punishment’) on a new label, Time To Kill records, and with yet another new lineup. Entering the fray is Hideous Divinity Drummer Edoardo Di Santo (as ‘Atticvs’ here), and Eyeconoclast bassist Gabriele Vellucci. What hasn’t changed is that ADE […]
You’ll read no disrespect from me to Riley McShane because his albums with Allegaeon are incredible. That’s especially true for their most recent, which was my album of the year in 2022, Damnum. However, Ezra Haynes has always been the true voice of Allegaeon. When Riley left after the last album, I was bummed, but […]
Legendary is a word reserved for the elite. The bands that have endured throughout the many transformations that have run through Black Metal since It’s vile birth so many years ago. If you don’t know the history of Rotting Christ, go read a book. Seriously, there’s an official book written about them. I’ll wait. Okay, […]
After two excellent, reinvigorated albums in Hammer of the Witches and Crytoriana, Dani Filth and his hired gang of ever-changing musical mercenaries, took a step back with 2021, Existence is Futile, where the constant line-up changes, appeared to have taken its toll, mainly Lindsey Schoolcraft, who was settling into her role as the new Sara […]
I was late to the Istapp (‘icicle’) party, only discovering them on 2019’s stellar, The Insidious Star, but subsequently going back and listening to prior albums from the mid-10’s like Blekinge and Frostbiten. Honestly, though I had kind of forgotten about them, but 6 years after The Insidious Star a revamped Istapp is back. There […]
After bursting on the scene with their 2007 debut, The Somatic Defilement, Tennessee’s Whitechapel quickly rose to the top of deathcore hierarchy with the follow-up, This Is Exile, in 2008, still a classic in the genre all these years later. However, subsequent albums like Our Endless War, Whitechapel, Mark of the Blade, and A New […]
Finland’s Havukruunu ( ‘coniferous crown’) first got on my radar with 2017’s Kelle Surut Soi, but in 2020, they obliterated my radar with 2020’s Uinuos syömein sota, which was my clear-cut favorite album of the year. The funny thing is, we have never actually reviewed them! Well let’s fix that together, shall we? The word […]
There are so many highlights on this album that it’s stupid to reduce them to a review, especially one coming from a writer such as myself (read: a shitty one). For once this isn’t about me, but the new album from The Ukraine’s Jinjer, called Duél. I’m this close (damn, look at how close my […]
A few months back, I ran into Mark Kloeppel, one of the guitarists for Misery Index, and Missouri act Cast The Stone, Ive ‘known’ him and fellow Cast The Stone member Derek Engemann from various shows I’ve attended in St Loius over the years. We got to talking about Scour, the black metal band he […]
Scotland’s Folk/Pagan Black Metal band Saor, under the sole guise of Andy Marshall, and guest musicians, return with Amidst the Ruins, their sixth album. This is their most adventurous and most expansive album to date. The 12+ minute title track leads the charge, opening this terrific album, with a long blast beat which has other […]
Germany’s Obscura needs no introduction. They have resided near or atop the tech death heap since 2009’s Cosmogenesis. For me, they peaked with 2016s Akroasis, but all of their albums have been excellent, including their last effort, 2021s A Valediction, which saw former members Christian Munzer (ex-Necrophagist, ex-Spawn of Possession) and fretless bassist Jeroen Paul Thessling return […]
You can virtually cut and paste my review of 2021’s Maere for this Austrian duo’s 6th album, as they are so locked into their despondent, post/ shoe gaze/ atmospheric black metal sound, it’s scary. That said, at a trim 67 minutes on 1 CD as opposed to Maere’s 2 CD, 84-ish minute affair, the band […]
When Panzerchrist released Last of a Kind in 2023 I was fucking ecstatic. It had been a long minute since 7th Offensive and their departure from the Metal community was deeply emotional (I know I cried like a bitch… not really but I was sad for sure) so when Last of a Kind was announced, […]
Remember these guys? At one point in the mid-1990s Denmark’s Konkhra was on the very cusp of international metal stardom. As nu-metal exploded and death metal was selling out/transitioning to more commercial groovy sounds (Gorefest, Grave, Obituary, Entombed, Mercyless, Dismember, etc), Konkhra capitalized on this. And with albums like Sexual Affect Disorder, Spit or Swallow […]