Yes folks, you read that right – GOREPUNCH.  The endless use of the word “gore” somewhere in a band’s name just never ceases to amaze me.  This one is either referring to a special brand of drink, or an especially metal form of striking someone with your fist.  The moniker aside, what we have is […]

 The first Corrections House full length didn’t do a lot for me; some of it was “interesting”, but it felt like a lot of disparate elements that each of these well-regarded musicians brought from their regular gigs just didn’t stew into something I really found enjoyable. So, color me pleasantly surprised. Know How To Carry […]

  After a few demo releases and that killer split with Epi-Demic, Canadian punk thrashers Solanum are back with their first full-length altar offering.  Into the Sinner Circle is an album with no let-up, its 7 focused musical lacerations ignore the “stun” setting and fire every shot to kill.  This is stuff meant to be […]

Let’s be brutally honest shall we? Sure Grave’s first three albums are certified classics, and while there’s some division over Hating Life, I’m willing to say that other the overall excitement of the band’s reunion in 2002, the post Jorgen, post “Back From the Grave” glow might have worn off . And other than 2012s Endless […]

Hailing from Ohio, this is TON’S, Jeff Shepler’s other band, Fully Consumed.  The band is labeled as technical death metal.  I found the band to be more straightforward brutal death metal.  Think Gorgasm/Lividity/(early)Deeds of Flesh  type of stuff. I really love TON and their new album, but I’m not the biggest fan of Fully Consumed’s […]

In a previous review that I did for the recent Lux Ferre release (I will wait a minute, while you go read that review) I mentioned when listening to metal, for the most part, I look for that energy, the aggression, something that will get the head banging and just make me put the pedal to […]

After 2011s solid debut of symphonic black metal, No Closure, I just assumed after not hearing literally anything about them for 4 years, these Chicagoans were falling to the same fate of some many metal bands, just one and done. But out of the blue from those fine folks at Clawhammer PR, this album appears. And […]

I’ve only had a few tastes of Seattle quartet He Whose Ox is Gored and their rising tide, wall of noise musical inclinations, but every single one has been fuckin’ delicious.  After a few EP releases I find myself hung on the horns of the band’s debut long-player The Camel, The Lion, The Child.  From […]

After 2012s simpler, Stockholm death metal based The Chills, this US death metal act emerged from a creative cocoon that was last years Ecdysis, a better, more creative and more challenging band. And only a year later they have returned with Anareta, (a greek astrological term for a ‘destroyer’), and it continues the more progressive, experimental […]

Disfigured was a NY death metal band, back in the 90’s and I was friends with the fellas, especially Ryan Schimmenti, the founding member.  Russia’s Lord of the Sick Recordings have just issued, in limited pressing, Anthology of Dementia, which puts all of Disfigured’s recordings on a cd.  I was a huge fan of this band, […]

Let’s face it, whether or not Chris Broderick’s name rings a bell with you is probably irrelevant, as you as a metal fan are bound to have heard something of his output.  Be it his time with Jag Panzer, his stint with Megadeth, or even his time performing live with Nevermore, chances are that you […]

Stomping into view with a sound somewhere between Dying Fetus and Blood Duster, Finland’s creatively named Cumbeast is finally delivering album number three after a 7 year wait. I vaguely recall crossing paths with these guys  somewhere in my journalistic endeavors, but they didn’t really stick with me, but the aptly named Groovy Massacre certainly does. With […]

  Ruach Raah play scummy black metal with an punk evil spirit (as their name translates).  Probably best received live in a crumbling stone walled, graffiti splattered basement in their native Portugal.  All members in ski masks and faded black everything spazzing angrily.  There are no samples, no solo’s, no interludes, no god forsaken frills.  […]

Tsjuder is back with their brand of uncompromising black metal, their 2nd release since returning from a brief hiatus and they continue to keep the pace and to rise within the ranks of the black metal elite with this release. Tsjuder started out slowly for me, the 1st release I heard from them being Kill For Satan, […]

Seeking to take the classic sludge sound into busier, high traffic avenues, Arizonians Gale spare no expense and leave no boulder uncrushed in their mission to plow eardrums under six feet of sediment in the name of their mission.  They’re atmospherically heavy like before Neurosis went all soft on us, heavy and ugly like an […]

I first came across Poland’s Mord’A’Stigmata with the 2011 release AntiMatter and I was intrigued with their take on black metal which contained avant-garde elements and slight progressive influences to bring forth a different form of darkness and with current members also in Arkona and Preludium, I knew there is a history behind them. I […]

Considering the band name, logo,  album’s title and cool cover art, I braced for some ‘brootal’ death metal. However, what I actually got was some sharp if derivative Germanic  melodic death metal/metalcore in the vein of the label’s 00s stuff like Feast For the Crows, Six Reasons to Kill, Deadsoil the american sound of the time […]

  Speed… speed… and more SPEEEEEEEDDDDD!!!  That’s what you should expect out of the 3rd LP from this Italian brutal death metal quintet.  They want to play as fast as possible, and fast they most definitely can do. I remember this band from their last full length, Degenerating Anthropophagical Euphoria, which was a good album, […]

Holland’s Nailgun Massacre return with their second album and will be a top ten for me this year, easily.  2011’s Backyard Butchery was a killer debut with tons of Autopsy tinged, memorable brutality.  Boned, Boxed and Buried has it beat.  Opener “Where’s the Head?” is so ridiculously catchy-your head will fall off from the non-stop […]

When it came to pushing the envelope of extreme metal to, well, its outermost extremities, few did it better that the UK’s Akercocke. This was a band with not only a passion for extreme metal in all its twisted forms, but also a taste for the avant-garde that would meander anywhere from electronica, to opera, […]

Strap on your gas mask and be attentive for the air raid siren, citizens.  The enemy can strike at any time!  Kommandant‘s ranks are filled with Chicago metal veterans having between them played in area acts such as Forest of Impaled, Cianide, Enforsaken and, to no one’s surprise, each member had at some point lent […]

‘Oppressive’, that’s what comes to mind when listening to this. The Encarta dictionary defines this word as; “Exerting a worrying, troubling or burdensome pressure on somebody,” and with this, the latest release from Finland’s Tyranny, it does exactly that, the sense of foreboding in the mind, the weight on a individual, it brings them down […]

 del·uge ˈdelyo͞o(d)ZH/ noun 1.a severe flood. synonyms:  flood, torrent, spate. “homes were swept away by the deluge” verb 1. inundate with a great quantity of something. “he has been deluged with offers of work” synonyms:  inundate, overwhelm, overrun, flood, swamp, snow under, engulf, bombard. “we have been deluged with calls” Hailing from France, the debut from Deluge is cut from the […]

Like fellow North Carolina instrumental sages Husky (now known as Watch Husky Burn), three-piece Boar weave gracefully manic, deviously diverse jams across their debut Self-Titled EP.  Their tricky, psychedelic work casts a magician’s mind control spell on the listener as it traverses the briny depths of psychedelic rock, ascends the mountainous plateau of heavy metal […]

In this ‘journalism’ gig you run across hundred of people and bands. I’ve done countless interviews, got countless emails and Facebook messages and so forth, but you rarely make a connection. Something more than just the grinding wheels of music and reviewing/interviewing. However, sometimes you do make a deeper connection and dare I say, friendship. I like to think I made one such connection with Nathan Gearhart, the vocalist for the re-activated Arizona Death metal band, Vehemence.