Australia is a scary fucking place. Not only does the country have some of the most dangerous animals on the planet, but it also is home to some really vicious Black Metal ( Bestial Warlust and Destroyer 666 to name just a couple), Erebus Enthroned could very well have moved into that company with Temple […]
When the former vocalist of Internal Bleeding and current teethofthedivine staffer recommends a band and album for me, I usually take notice, even if released in 2013. Especially when I’ve been in a real brutal death metal/slam death metal frame of mind of late, and Frank Rini pretty well eats and breathes the style. Even more […]
For the most part, Cyber or Industrial Death Metal has a pretty rigid formula: Beefy, chunky guitars, mechanical pounding drums and the odd whirr or beep and sample here and there with some growled vocals. The Netherlands’ Empire of the Scourged, while generally following those paradigms also manage to changes things up a bit on […]
Shortly before recording this album, Erlen Meyer‘s drummer, Romain Djoudi, was killed in a motorcycle accident. The remaining band members’ feelings of anger and grief became direct inspiration during the subsequent recording of this harrowing album. Erlen Meyer play a heavy, dissonant brand of sludgy post-hardcore in the vein of Overmars and later-era Breach, a […]
Eye of Solitude is a funeral doom/death metal band from the UK continuing the style that the country forged many years ago with the likes of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Anathema. Canto III is (obviously) their third release, and it really sees the band peak and carry the mantle from their county mates […]
Between this release and their recent blockbuster split between Cannibas Corpse and Ghoul, Tankcrimes has been on an early year roll. This latest offering teams-up gore metal vets Exhumed with up and coming hardcore/punk/metal destructors, Iron Reagan, for an enticing cocktail of old school death metal and thrashy hardcore punk. They each supply four songs, […]
So do you like your brutal death metal with a razor-thin production, monotone vocals and no real attempt at songwriting? Well if so, then you’ll love the new full length from Italy’s Exhumer. It’s a straight forward exercise in how to do brutal death by the book, without really even caring to open the cover […]
I’ve been looking forward to this release since Blast Head announced it a few months ago. Not just because it’s a Blast Head release, and the new label is really coming into its own, but Eternium hail from St Louis, Missouri my metal bereft neck of the woods, and feature Chad Griffin, formerly of short […]
Here is the first release from new Colorado based label, To The Head Records. It is a 5 track split EP from two Colorado bands in Murder Cafe and Earth Burnt Black. Both ply sort form of doom metal, which appears to be the label’s focus, but both bring something a little different to typical doom […]
I buy pretty much every new release Deepsend Records puts out and label owner Graham Landers is always giving me recommendations from his label & outside his label. He knows me and he’s always on the money with his recommendations, which my wife appreciates, with all my cds coming in every week. I never heard […]
So here is only the second release from P2, a label co owned and run by one Paulo Paguntalan, guitarist and vocalist for Copremesis (whose debut Muay Thai Lady Boys still has some of the best cover art ever) and vocalist for Andromorphous Rexalia, so it should come as no surprise that the fledgling label’s […]
Victory Records has become such an anomaly for me. After being one of the true stalwart metalcore/hardcore labels responsible for releasing albums by Integrity, Martyr AD, Damnation AD, Hatebreed, Earth Crisis and Thursday and even being the home to Between the Buried and Me for 3 absolutely classic albums, the label is just hard to […]
Prior to 2011’s surprisingly excellent All Guts, No Glory (which I still heard about a year after the fact), my last experience with Exhumed was 1998’s Gore Metal, which I never really cared for. So imagine my surprise when I was hearing a latter Carcass clone complete with melodic solos and hooky, catchy riffs, which […]
Norway’s Extol seemed to be that rare Christian metal band that were saved the usual ridicule and cries of “Get God out of my metal!” from knuckle dragging satanic metal heads when they surfaced in the late 90s. Whether it is because like thrashers Believer before them, they played a ‘real’ brand of metal (a […]
Well it looks like America and Canada are finally having some profound influence on Black Metal around the world. Last year’s excruciatingly awesome demo by the Russian troupe Kalendae was “Cascadian,” “atmospheric,” Black Metal of the absolute highest caliber. The 20 minute, 2 track demo was absolutely the best slice of such a thing since […]
Prophetic marks the debut album from Australian death metal band, Eternal Rest. The young band has crafted a solid, confident album that smacks of potential for a bright future ahead. The band plays with unyielding passion and intensity over the album’s concise duration, displaying their accomplished instrumental chops and growing stature as song-writers. Yet for […]
After two lauded albums that arguably spear headed the Swededeath revival, Sweden’s Entrails is playing with the big boys now. Residing on Metal Blade Records, (a fitting replacement for Vomitory methinks) and sitting atop the heap of retro Swedish/Sunlight inspired death metal bands. But the pressure is now even more, especially with the all important […]
I remember the collective groan Morbid Angel received when they said they would be incorporating elements of electronic and industrial in to their next record. While that experiment turned out to be… well… let’s say less than good, the sad reality of Ilud Divinum Insanus should only serve to highlight all the great bands out […]
This album starts out promising enough, with a nice chug riff backed by some pounding double bass. But once the overly-nasal, high-pitched pig squeal of vocalist Jaymes Grundmann kick-in (a stylistic choice that’s unfortunately overused through the entire album), you might find yourself reaching for the skip button. This is brutal death metal at its […]
Generally, most releases under the Seventh Rule banner come with an inordinate amount of distortion draped over them, falling somewhere between the crust and doom areas of classification. It’s what has made the label so successful in a short amount of time, and has polarized it to those who prefer their metal a bit more […]
Colorado’s Execration aren’t doing anything particularity innovative or new within death metal on their sophomore album, but they do death metal pretty well and add a little resin driven intellectual brutality to their standard US death metal throes. With a sound I can only term as “Colorado-ish” there’s some Cephalic Carnage complexity (especially vocally) and […]
Sorry this review is so late, but ya know Rome wasn’t built in a day… I wasn’t ever really that enamored with Romulus, the first release of Ex Deo, the epic, Roman themed side project headed by Kataklysm frontman Maurizio Iacono and most of his Kataklysm buddies. It seemed little more than unused Kataklysm riffs […]
From the label who in 2012 alone was responsible for the likes of Resurgency, Ectovoid, Flagellated Seraph, Malfeitor and Decaying comes yet more very tasty old school death metal by way of two EPs from Turkey’s Engulfed and Greece’s War Possession. Formed by two members of the now defunct Burial Invocation, who themselves released a […]
A new Enslaved album has become an event for fans of challenging and atmospheric progressive and extreme metal, promising a depth and soulful, honest authenticity that few bands today cannot match. Theirs is a ceaselessly adventurous, bold and fearless persona, and every new album is a journey all its own. With RIITIIR, the 12th studio album in a […]
You are going to have a hard time believing this, but there was a time when I was actually questioning whether I should review the latest release from Finland’s epic folk metal stalwarts Ensiferum. You see, I actually seem to have soured a bit of folk metal in 2012, (I know, I know, its like […]