I’m sure its a coincidence more than anything, but Battle Beast releasing their 5th album shortly after former member Anton Kabanen released the 2nd album from from the band he formed after acrimoniously leaving Battle Beast , Beast In Black, but it sure feel like a more personal, competitive move. However I digress.. So while […]

Guitarist Jim Tasikas is back with Contrarian’s third album and  again, joining is George Kollias (Nile) on drums and vocals ( though Cody McConnell has joined as a live session vocalist), Sulaco’s Brians Mason (guitars) and Ed Paulsen on bass, and the skilled outfit continues their spot on latter era Death homage to precise levels […]

A few years ago bands like Nails, All Pigs Must Die, Trap Them  and almost every other release on Southern Lord was all the rage;  A feral, snarling mix of grind core, crust, death metal and hardcore rendered with a dirtied up Swedish HM2 buzzsaw tone.  Well, the 2018 debut from France’s Nuisible is here […]

Sweden’s Wretched Fate is a new band formed by members of melodic death metal band Non Divine Sun, and their debut album, Fleshletting is the album that Bloodbath should have released last year. Yep- I said it, heresy I know, but Fleshletting is a brutal, catchy and dynamic slab of Swedish styled death metal that you’d think a […]

When I checked out 2016s King Of Everything promo from this Ukranian act, and the lead single (or at least the video/single that came with the promo) “Words of Wisdom“, I wasn’t overly impressed with the sort of djenty modern groove, nu metal.  But a couple of years later, I started seeing ‘reaction’ videos to a […]

Do you like your death metal old school but brutal? Do you like your death metal sloppy and meaty? Do you like your death metal to be a mix of the first Cannibal Corpse album’s zombified, fetid blasts , Incantation’s oozing miasma and Devourment’s punishing grooves? Please let me introduce you to the third album from Arizona’s Meathook. With […]

I was rather impressed with the debut album Memento Mori, back in 2016 from these French melodic death metallers, and they have finally released a follow up in Prokopton, and no surprise, it’s just as impressive and consistent as the debut. Again with a sound heavily rooted in the string/synth-heavy, brighter, bouncy tones of early Children […]

For those of you who have heard the new Fallujah track, and, like me, wasn’t that impressed, here is an alternative for you in the sophomore album from Bay Area act Aenimus. With 11 tracks based on iconic horror stories (The Shining, IT, The Deadzone, Hannibal, etc) and a host of guests including Eddie Hermida (All Shall […]

England’s Hecate Enthroned is largely known for being the band that Former Cradle of Filth bassist/vocalist Jon Kennedy formed after departing Cradle of Filth before they were huge rock stars (he actually appears on the original version of Dusk and Her Embrace, recently released as The Original sin) , and subsequently and unabashedly ripping off Cradle […]

After 3 albums with Finland’s quick rising power metal act Battle Beast, guitarist Anton Kabanen had a bit of an acrimonious departure from the band but quickly formed his own band Beast In Black, then really didn’t hide the fact its basically the same band, with the same sound, but somehow even cheesier and catchier. They […]

From newish  German label that already brought us fine releases by Demonbreed, Carnal Tomb, and Sentient Horror in their short lifespan, comes another excellent slab of buzz saw laden, HM 2 drenched, Swedish styled death metal with the debut from Italy’s Organic. Fans of the genre will probably be ordering this as I speak, but yeah this is a […]

Cripes- I have not reviewed an Unleashed album since 2006s Midvinterblot, and frankly due to a really awkward interview with founder Jonny Hedlund after I ripped 2002s Hells Unleashed, haven’t really given the band too much attention, despite an apparent solid run of albums since then in Hammer Battalion, As Yggdrasil Trembles, Odalheim, Dawn of the Nine. So, […]

It’s been a fair while since a ‘real’ ( I use that term due to the crossover between death metal and deathcore in bands like Ingested, Fit For For an Autopsy, Lorna Shore and Organectomy and such) deathcore record tickle my fancy, probably something in 2017 or early 2018 (maybe Lorna Shore‘s Flesh Coffin?). But here is the late […]

Apparently a lot has happened in the 12 or so years since reviewed this Polish band’s debut, Buried in Between, a decent At The Gates ish metalcore/melodeath record. There’s been a lineup shuffle, and more importantly over the band’s 3 albums since the debut, these guys have evolved into solid death/black metal act and now […]

Good lord- talk about an obscure blast from the past. I vaguely remember purchasing this Swdish band’s debut EP Alienor back in 1993 as a blind purchase, and kind digging it. It was a more progressive slightly different take on death metal back then, but 2 albums later in 1994 and 1996 the band disappeared […]

Ever since I met these, then kids back in 2008 at a Summer Slaughter (or maybe Sounds of the Underground?) show, I’ve enjoyed watching them stick out the genre saturation of proggy deathcore djent whatever ever core that blew up in the mid 00s (“Abstract Art” from the debut The New Reign is still cool as fuck over […]

I’ve heard of Lividity, veterans of the Chicago/Illinois brutal death metal scene since the mid 90s, but have not really heard them or owned any of their albums. Ive seen them lumped in with the likes of Gorgasm to Cannibal Corpse and of course Deaden and Broken Hope, and after hearing the band’s 6th album, Perveseverance, […]

To me, the career path of Australia’s Psycroptic has somewhat mirrored Poland’s Decapitated: 7 albums in, early career highlighted by a couple of critically acclaimed technical death metal albums, then both had a divisive vocalist change with Psycroptic moving to the Jason Pepiatt  and Decapitated moving from Sauron to Cowan then a slight style shift into less tech death metal realms. Those familiar […]

I’ll go ahead and assume that Germany’s Godskill is named after killing Gods, and not the skill said God possesses. Anyway, what we have here is a late 2018 release that is a pretty solid second album from these burly melodic death metalers. Imbuing the chunky Danish scene akin to Illdisposed, Corpus Mortale, Dawn of Disease and […]

Sacramento’s Wurm Flesh is Comatose Music’s latest signing (at the writing of this review), and they are exactly what you would expect from Comatose Music in 2018/19; no frills, brutal death metal that sticks rigidly to the label’s formula and delivers the goods, nothing more, nothing less. Samples? Check. Something awful happening to a naked chick on the […]

The Heretic’s Fork (an expectedly awful medieval torture device) is one of those ‘mysterious’ bands with no bio, information, facebook, or bandcamp page, heck these guys are not even up at Metal Archives. But here is what I’m assuming is their debut album, and its 8 tracks of muddy, chaotic, dissonant brutal death metal. At 27 minutes and […]

Founder and owner of now-defunct Canadian record label Blasthead records, Paul Shaw, always had an ear for good music, even if his own tech death band Hate Division was merely average. But it appears he and his Hate Division pals have a better knack for melodic death metal. With nods to Amon Amarth, Arghoslent, Helcaraxe, […]

Back in 2013,  Germany’s Sulphur Aeon made quite a splash in the death metal genre with their churning Lovecraftian based debut album, Swallowed By the Ocean’s Tide, then followed it up with the more miasmal, Gateway to the Antisphere is 2015, an album that had lofty expectations but still grew on me. Both albums made my year-end […]

First off- Love that cover- I want that on a giant print or t-shirt. Second, Valdur has quickly released their 6th album, barely a year after their last effort, Divine Cessation, came out. How’s that for production? Third, the band appears to have swung the pendulum ever so slightly back towards their black metal roots from the pure, noisy […]

So imagine  Mastodon got heavier instead of more progressive, added some Crowbar heft to a stoner metal backbone and were suddenly from Australia and you’d get Sydney’s Sumeru and their raucous second album, Summon Destroyer. After the intro, “Inanis Kultus” the band dive in to “The Temple”, and it’s a bit of a soft opening for the album as […]