Posts Tagged ‘2023’

If you fell asleep at the end of 2023 then you would have missed up-and-coming band Red Vinter’s We Built Our Own Death Machine demo, which literally dropped, right before 2024.  While it’s a demo, any release that drops at the end of a year is dead in the water, so to speak.  The band […]

How does a New Jersey Tech Death based on the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion sound? Well, I am intrigued. Things get kicked off with “Synchronization.”   First impressions are a mix of Spawn of Possession with a bit of earlier Archspire. The way they use vibrato is impressive. Pretty insane musicianship from these guys. Excellent guest […]

Another late 2023 release that I was late to the party was, is the fourth album from Ohio’s symphonic/melodic black metal act Valdrin. It’s been a while since I heard from them, as it was 2014’s debut on Blast Head Records, Beyond the Forest where I was introduced to them, but have not heard anything […]

I’ll be honest with you, dear reader – usually when an established artist strikes out on their own, regardless of how much I may respect and admire them or their prior work with their respective bands, I just cannot care less. I don’t think it’s going out on too big of a limb to say […]

Germany’s Atronos is one of the many projects that feature vocalist ‘Baptist’ who also serves in two other great German black metal acts Mavorim and Eisenkult. Eisenkult used to be his outlet for more triumphant medieval black metal with albums like 2020’s Gedenken wir der Finsternis, but in 2022 Eisenkult did a split demo with his […]

Italy’s Drown In Sulfur got off to a hot start in the blackened deathcore genre with various EPs including the excellent Blackwind EP, which I really enjoyed and own, and I thought the band was ready to blow up. Then the band literally blew up shortly after with drummer Domenico Tamila kicking out all of […]

Impalement is the Swiss, one-man project from Beliath (who also helps out with Germany’s Nargaroth for live shows).  But unlike the other recent Swiss one-man project I reviewed, Felonie, which was more melodic atmospheric black metal, this, as the apt album title states, is blistering, black/death metal. The Dawn of Blackened Death is the second […]

We at Teeth of the Divine don’t want to just steamroll over 2023 like it never happened, because when you go back and really think about all the wild shit that went down, it certainly deserves some recognition – from our nation’s capital providing the most insane reality TV possible (we can’t wait for the George Santos/Lauren Boebert spinoff) to a handful of millionaires deciding to visit the Titanic in a glorified oil drum with unsurprisingly disastrous results, there was no shortage of explosive (er, implosive?) moments to reflect on.

It’s been a while since San Diego’s brutal death metal band Condemned, released an album, which was their third album, His Divine Shadow, in 2017.  Such a brutal death metal album.  I saw them on that tour as well and hung out with the mastermind behind the band, guitarist Steve Crow, and vocalist Sam Townsley.  […]

Los Angeles Infernal Black Metal Wrath of Logarius (formerly Martyr Logarius) returns with Necrotic Assimilation.   This is an EP at a little over nineteen minutes.  Things get kicked off with a ninety-second intro track called “At the Knighted Throne”.  Kind of eerie swelling synth strings.   Tempo builds and builds and segues into track two. […]

France’s Embrace Your Punishment started as a pretty standard hardcore Hatebreed-ish band with some death metal hues back in 2014s Honor Before Glory, but has got progressively heavier with 2019s Nameless King, especially vocally. And now with album number 3, Made of Stone, are an absolute beast of a band that blends hardcore, brutal death […]

I’ve taken a deep dive into Depressive Suicidal Black Metal (hereafter referred to as DSBM) this year with Happy Days and Shining both reviewed in these hallowed pages and coming extremely recommended by yours truly. I sit here on a gloomy Sunday composing this review and ruminating on the French Black Metal scene; the core […]

Jesus Fucking Christ. Has it really been 20 years since Israel’s Nail Within released their self-titled debut? That was three jobs ago, I was a baby; only 27 years old, and my daughter was only 3. She’s now graduated college and had a job for almost 2 years….FUCK! I mean the absolutely killer tracks “Dirty […]

Hey what does TTFA stand for, you might ask?  Well it stands for Torn The Fuck Apart – a brutal American death metal band hailing from Kansas.  The band used to go by their full name years ago but now use the TTFA acronym…because maybe it’s less offensive to some people. This is the first […]

Heavy metal is in dire need of appropriate album covers to get tattooed directly above one’s butt crack. Well, Plaguemace is here to provide that reptile you’ve always wanted above your b-hole. They provide some gnarly ass death metal to put up there, too. You’re going to get your typical new wave of old-school death […]

Unlike my urologist when I was just a little guy, I really dropped the ball here. Don’t think about that one too hard, please. When it comes to The Convalescence, I heard of them but hadn’t listened. On a random Tuesday or Wednesday, I noticed they were playing at my friend’s venue outside of Pittsburgh […]

I’m new to Spanish veterans Æolian, but after hearing Echoes of the Future, they, like the recent KING I covered, are one of those bands where I instantly pre-order the album and then go back and purchase the entire back catalog. Fuck this is good. I mean from start to finish, every note and exquisitely […]

The last time I did a review of a Christmas album, it was Majestica’s take on Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. A largely successful, fun, power metal album with plenty of Xmas cheer and classic Xmas hymns and elements. The Black Nativity is the complete opposite. And not in a good way. Illinois Christian black metallers […]

Anytime I think of Warcrab, I can’t help but be reminded of the meme/photo of the crab holding a knife. I sometimes identify with that crab. Crabs in general. Something about a hard shell and tasty insides. Legs spread and eaten. Hold on now before we all get hot and bothered. This isn’t that kind […]

No one here needs me to tell you, but I’m gonna do it anyway – times is tough! As such, I recently took up a weekend gig to help make ends meet and, after a nearly decade hiatus, rejoined the food service and hospitality industry (bear with me I promise there’s a point to all […]

Have you ever come upon a band that sounded so hateful and intense that you began asking yourself why has this band slipped past your radar?  Several years ago my good friend Graham sent me a Bandcamp link to End’s Splinters From An Ever​-​Changing Face album.  Honestly, I cannot remember for the life of me […]

What’s in a name? Well, I have to admit I’m shallow enough I passed up this promo when it first showed up in my inbox as the name Deathcode Society did little to draw my interest. Then, while listening to a symphonic black metal playlist on Spotify, the track “Scolopendra”, played, and my attention was […]

If you’ve read this site for any amount of time you know I’m a sucker for 90s-styled symphonic black metal. And here is the debut from German newcomers Aphelium Aeternum and their excellent debut Dark Interstellar Mysteries, which delivers a perfect rendering of the genre, imbuing the classic acts like Dimmu Borgir, Obtained Enslavement, Old […]

One of the surprises being a metal reviewer (not journalist, mind you), is receiving the new promo for a band of whom I have been a fan for a while now. It’s even better when it’s out of nowhere. In this case I am of course referring to Sorcerer and their new, streamlined album Reign […]

Necrosanct was a short-lived death metal band from England, who had a little smattering of success.  In their brief 5 year period they were writing maniacs and released three full-length albums which I will touch on in this review.  In 2019 the compilation Legacy was released which included some demos/rehearsals.  We get UK’s Back on […]