It’s been  3 years since Anders Biazzi (ex –Amon Amarth, Gods Forsaken, Blood Mortized) released a Just Before Dawn album, the war themed Swedish death metal project with a veritable host of guest vocalists and musicians. There has been a couple of EPs and a single, and now right before the band’s next full length release, […]

I have no idea when the Old School Swedish Death retro movement really got started. With Bloodbath maybe? I do know that it has been running strong for awhile now, but honestly, I never really cared about the retro movement as long as my favorite original Swedeath stalwarts, Dismember, were still (skinned) alive and kicking. […]

Necrowretch, from France, return with their third long-player, Satanic Slavery and on a brand new label-Season of Mist.  I’ve been following the band since their debut album, Putrid Death Sorcery in 2013 and struck up some cool convos with guitarist/vocalist Vlad, after interviewing them back then.  The band has no shortage of material, either.  Releasing […]

Contrarian caused a few waves back in 2015 with their highly regarded debut, Polemic. A supergroup of sorts founded by Jim Tasikas with Brian Mason (Sulaco), Leon Macy (Mithras) on guitars with George Lollias (Nile) on drums. It was a Death homage, with  a heavier lean on the band’s latter, more progressive tones, adding some […]

One of the coolest and lesser known (at least in the US) power metal acts I have discovered recently is Germany’s Orden Ogan. A long running band with 5 albums under their belt since 2004 (with 2015s Ravenhead and 2012s To the End being the ones that got me hooked), these guys add a little oomph to power […]

I’m curious. How many metalheads, when asked the question, “What attracts you to heavy metal music?”, would answer with a simple and sound, “Fun”. Yet in reality, isn’t that the brass tax of it all? If the love we have for metal wasn’t, in the long run, “fun”,  would we indulge in it? Maybe it’s […]

Khazaddums‘ 2015, Dwarven/Tolkien themed EP, In Dwarven Halls was a solid, promising little 3 song demo/release, but I was not expecting quite this big of a leap in quality a mere 2 years later with the band’s full length debut. Driving the massive improvement to the band’s brutal, Nile-ish death metal is the addition of full […]

Long Island, New York’s long running Afterbirth had a re-birth 4 years ago.  Guitarist, Cody Drasser was like ‘OK, let’s get this shit going and finally get our debut album out’.  You see, Afterbirth began in the 90’s and while I was in Internal Bleeding we played shows with them and they were always great live and […]

The Barren Throne, the third album from Iceland’s Beneath, was a solid tech/brutal death  metal affair, befitting the label it was released on (Unique Leader), but it was hardly a memorable, game changing album. That looks to have changed with the band’s wholly improved and utterly  impressive third album, Ephemeris. The more cosmic/celestial theme of […]

So, amid my recent power/heavy metal reawakening, it dawned on me that all of the bands I have become enamored with have been European. Sure, I dabbled with the new Iced Earth, Demons and Wizards, Kamelot and a few others, but none really hit the spot. Then I received a promo from Pennsylvania’s Lör . An […]

Ok, Dark Descent Records has been hitting slam dunks all over the place, this year with their releases.  Now Unique Leader Records, is getting pretty close, with their outstanding releases and will it be DDR for the fourth time claiming label of the year, in my year’s end best or not?  While it remains to […]

  Well this is definitely an album I missed out on last year and wish I would have discovered it sooner.  In 1995 a band from Quebec called Gorelust released an album called Reign of Lunacy that came out on New World Symphony records.  Fast forward twenty two years later and we have Eyexist, a […]

Cacti blowing by in the distance at 90 mph on an open desert road, Camaro pushing the engine to the breaking point and the unholy grasp of mescaline taking control…we must be in California?  We certainly aren’t because quartet Fire Down Below and their debut Viper, Vixen, Goddess, Saint is straight from the hidden Sahara […]

Though some might argue they belonged with Dark Tranquillity and In Flames in the pantheons of Swedish metal, I’d put Desultory’s first three albums right there in the second tier of Swedish styled death metal along side the likes of Seance, Cemetery, Comecon and such. Their more melodic take on the Stockholm sound was a […]

After one of the more successful comebacks of the last few years with 2012s Vanquish in Vengeance, death metal legends Incantation had a quick turn around with 2014s Dirges of Elysium, a solid album, but a bit of a step back with a cleaner, more sterile production and a bit of a rushed sense of […]

Chances are, if you’re a “brutal death metal” fan, that you are well familiar with California’s Pathology. Hell, if you’re just a half-assed metal fan you’ve probably heard of the band at the very least. The group has released nine albums, new album included, in eleven years of solid brutal death metal. Some albums a […]

Listen, I’m not much of a ‘crossover’ guy. I appreciated the heydey of DRI, Prong, Crumbsuckers, Ludichrist and recently, Detroit Hellmouth are decent , but for the most part i like my thrash and my puck/hardcore somewhat separate. But, like a professional, I occasionally try to get out of my comfort zone. Sometimes it works […]

Knowing I was going to see Undergang, live in Baltimore and seeing Necrot was touring with them I knew I had to check them out.  Luckily Larry Larriland Lapinsky told me Necrot kicked ass and to check them out.  Thankfully I did and what a find Necrot are.  Based out of Oakland, Ca, although the […]

Broken Hope has been a force in the United States Death Metal scene for nearly thirty years now.  Jeremy Wagner has really done an outstanding job rebuilding the group and keeping the style of death metal that they have played for nearly three decades fine-tuned and meticulously written.  Here we have their sixth full length […]

Finland’s sickest sludgy scum grinders who happen to have a penchant for Norwegian darkness are back with their 7th full-length release since 1998…and that’s not counting the mountain of demos, splits and EPs that punctuated the interim between albums.  My introduction was the split with Bud Junkees (and even though I dig these guys too), […]

California’s Rings of Saturn and their (jokingly) self described ‘aliencore’ are one of the more divisive bands in metal, even more some since allegations the band recorded their materiel at half speed and used Guitar pro. Whether you consider them technical death metal or deathcore, the band’s first 3 albums Dingir and Lugal Ki En got […]

“A priest who had an affair with a 12 or 15 year old girl brought to one of their encounters, a consecrated host, and he touched her vagina and he said ‘this is how God loves you” and then he raped her”. And so that creepy quote begins the debut EP from Milwaukee’s Prezir (Serb-Croatian for […]

No disrespect to Germany’s Anasarca, but I had never heard of them prior to this album and they’ve been slogging their brand of death metal since the 90’s, Survival Mode being their fourth album and first in 13 years.  Give it up for founding member, Michael Dormann-guitarist/vocalist keeping the band going, because Survival Mode is […]

Iowa City depression sludge fuckers Aseethe make Grief look like a party band.  That’s not to say that their abilities are quite up to the feral hope rape of bands like Noothgrush, Grief, Burning Witch, Toadliquor, Dystopia, Wellington, etc., just yet but with their latest full-length gruel platter Hopes of Failure they are registering as […]

Hailing from Massachusetts, The Summoned play a form of noisy, techy/grindy spazzy tech/death metal that recalls a lot of the Black Market Activities/ Ironclad Recordings bands of the early and mid 00s. Much like the recent release from super group Johm Frum, there’s a lot of Dillenger-y, The Red Chord, Animosity, early Between the Buried and […]