Archive for the ‘Reviews › H’ Category

If you fancy yourself fan of vintage, no frills thrash metal and you’ve not yet heard Hirax, then you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of El Rostro De La Muerte as soon as possible. In the way of a brief history lesson, Hirax were part of the early Metal Blade roster […]

Hyadningar’s The Weak Creation has been on my review list for a while now, sitting idle among a few goregrind and old-school death metal CDs like an orphaned stepchild. I’m glad I decided to play it before the first decade of the new millennium closed. Here’s one black metal album from 2009 that deserves to […]

Well, it ain’t Christian metalcore; that’s a certainty. Ruination of the Heavenly Communion is a split release from Father Befouled and Helcaraxe, otherwise known as double Satanic trouble. You may know Georgia’s Father Befouled as the act that released Profano Ad Regnum (as in “Regnum? Damn near killed him!”), a hideous exercise in dread-spreading old […]

When reviewing the latest release by a group with a back catalogue such as Hypocrisy‘s, the question comes up of whether to compare it to previous releases in terms of “success” or whether to let it stand alone. I’ll try to do a bit of both in this review, because it’s only fair. Hypocrisy‘s timeline […]

Neurosis frontman Steve Von Till reaps the benefits of his home studio and sows confusion on this second release from his other solo project, Harvestman, a name that either evokes the image of some pagan human-deity hybrid, or suggests a great brand name for vegetarian tv-dinners, depending on how serious the listener or reviewer is […]

Credit the Czech Republic’s Lacerated Enemy Records for nabbing the license for this Skull and Bones Records released debut from these young (and now split up) Australian upstarts Hiroshima Will Burn, a modern tech-death act that came along just soon enough to catch what is looking like the tail end of a minor trend of cherubic […]

The members of Hardcore Superstar pitch their music as a blend of thrash and 1980s sleaze rock. I grew up on sleaze rock and thrash is my favorite metal genre, so that idea intrigued me. It’s a bit of false advertisement, though. While they’re on the heavier end of sleaze rock, their sound has much […]

Hailing from the craggy depths of New Jersey, Helcaraxë are one of the resurgent US bands plying Viking inspired forms of metal (Oakhelm, Hammer Horde, etc) and is one of US metal very best kept secrets. After their impressive debut, Triumph and Revenge, the trio has tightened up their form of gruff, dense and loose […]

An hour and a half of new recordings from Horna. Sanojesi Äärelle, (‘to the fount of thy word’), presents the Finnish  masters of minimalism at their current best. They are still maintaining that live in the studio feel, vocals in one take, cracks and slips kept intact, etc. Motorhead lives. Corvus has been with the […]

Released as digital only EP, Warsaw Rising is a stop gap release from this Dutch super group (members of Asphyx, Gorefest, Thanatos) with 2 new songs, a cover song (Twisted Sister’s “Destroyer”) and three live songs (“Red Wolves of Stalin”, “Nachthexen” and “The Crucial Offensive”) from the excellent …Of Frost and War debut. To be […]

*Rant mode ON* You know, I love thrash, and when this whole thrash resurgence came about, I was pretty damn excited. But truth be told, I’m flat out tired of it now. Why? Because the labels won’t stop signing every last one of them they find. Every label has to have one in order to […]

I’ll admit, even I have been a bit burnt out on Christian metal of late, and when I initially started listening to the debut from Fargo’s Hands I was pretty unmoved, as the rumbling opener “Hurricanes” didn’t do much for me and I simply classified it as yet another group of uppity noisy Christians spreading […]

Rank, damp, musty, raw Doom. From the intstrumental intro “The Holy Grail” to the end of “F.T.S.S.”, Heavy Lord is going to drown you in smoke, scum, feedback and sweat. Drawing from Stoner Doom as well as Sludge and Traditional Doom, Heavy Lord delivers the goods with force and intent. The way the guitars blend […]

Up until now, I was only familiar with Hacride by name, but had heard much praise. After spinning Lazarus, the French bands third full length, I can see why – these cats have a pretty unique sound that I can only attempt to compare to a few others. There are all kinds of sounds and […]

One of Germanic heathenry’s newer voices is also one of it’s most skilled. Just because a band releases a disc on their own does not mean it is a demo.  Some bands release a demo and call it a self released full length, implying quality, other band release a full length and call it a […]

You better be in the right frame of mind for this one. And by “right,” I mean not right at all. Kembatinan Premaster is the second full-length from Havohej (or “Jehovah” spelled backwards), the work solely that of one man, Paul Ledney (Profantica, Incantation, Toten, Abomination, etc) and it is 34 minutes – not sure […]

From the metallically fertile landscapes of Sweden comes the three piece Hero. Thier newest album Immortal showcases a melodic, yet melancholy sound with lots of mid-tempo, double-kick headbanging passages and sweeping, ambient ballads. The sound is somewhat unique in the way it combines it’s influences. It’s got the tight guitar sound and epic keyboard layers […]

Ok, there is something to be said for band’s who play this sort of Melodic Screamo music. The musicians can play, the vocalist (when he’s not enducing his own anyerism) can carry a tune and the musical arrangements take chops. So, I don’t want to sound like I can’t at least appreciate what they’re trying […]

Unless it’s a play on Hellhammer, Hellsaw has to be one of the most unoriginal, ‘scary’ black metal band names I think I’ve ever heard. And then to call the album Cold, well, I wasn’t expecting this be a very inspiring listen. But surprise surprise, these Austrians have delivered a really solid, enjoyable example of […]

Funny that a band from San Antonio should be named after the Norse god of winter, don’t you think? Hod takes their moniker from blind Hodur, the son of Odin who murdered Balder, a god most often likened to the sun. So what happens when crushing Texas brutality meets cold Norse mythology? You get Serpent, […]

Here’s a promising, nicely packaged, self released, 5 song EP than will not only appeal to you retro thrash fans out there, but maybe fans of modern thrash like Trivium and Cerberus (US). Hailing from Tempe, Arizona, Hemoptysis (coughing up of blood or of blood-stained sputum from the bronchi, larynx, trachea, or lungs), have all […]

Ah, Black Sabbath, how we’ve missed you. I know, it’s not officially “Black Sabbath”, but we all know it really is. God love Ozzy, but Dio has always been the man for this band vocally. And now Messer’s Dio, Iommi, Butler & Appice have come to show all schools, old and new, how Metal is […]

Practically every progressive rock band wants to record their own version of Tales from Topographic Oceans, the 1974 double album that was praised—or vilified, depending on the listener’s caprice—as Yes’ finest hour (and twenty minutes) of prog-indulgence. The fact that Yes weathered the loss of keyboardist nonpareil Rick Wakeman after its release and still came […]

Harpoon is a drum machine based ‘grindcore’ duo featuring vocalist Toney Vast-Binder of 7000 Dying Rats fame and guitarist/drum programmer Dean Costello (the band has also added Lair of The Minotaur bassist DJ Barraca). The term grindcore is relative here-this isn’t pure Napalm Death, nor is it the modern pseudo grindcore (Pig Destroyer, etc) that […]

If someone walked up to you on the street, threw a handful of Sunkist Fruit Gems in your face and then whacked you in the nuts with a large mackerel, it’d be about as wtf surprising as the first few minutes of this album. This is the kind of spastic, dizzying assault first perfected by […]