Ho Hum- another semi super group plying old school Swedish death metal and amazingly this one doesn’t feature Rogga Johanssen, though it sounds just like one of his many projects and does feature one of his other projects’ cohorts- namely P.Myrén (Paganizer, Facebreaker) and R Karlsson (Facebreaker, Edge of Sanity, Scar Symmetry, Devian, Incapacity) – […]
It would be easy to lump Sanctium in with Be’lakor; they are Australian, play a form of progressive melancholic Opeth and Insomnium styled melodic death metal and they really good at it. However, this band actually has ties to some other Aussie bands, like Switchblade, Bane of Isildur and most notably, impressive doomsters Myraeth, who […]
Having not heard these guys before, but with them being from Denmark, featuring members of Cerekloth and Undergang and residing on Deepsend Records, I was fully expecting yet another slab of powerful, chunky Danish death metal a la The Cleansing, Dawn of Demise or Corpus Mortale. However, Deepsend threw me a bit of a curveball. […]
After finishing 2012 on a killer note with the likes of Gorephilia, Maveth, Desolate Shrine and Paroxsihzem, Dark Descent Records is off to an equally killer and equally Finnish start to 2012 with releases from Vorum and Krypts. One could argue that the Finnish death metal revival is almost equal to the Swedish revival of […]
Back in 2001, The Netherlands’ Centurian were on the cusp of death metal stardom after releasing their furious second album Liber Zar Zax. However, the band stalled and disappeared for over a decade. But the members kept sharp and involved with notable acts like Nox, Severe Torture and recently, Infected Flesh. So now, three of […]
So as we start to get a little further into 2013, a lot of reviews are going to be late entries from 2012, and I’m trying to limit them to ones worth your while or ones that grabbed my ear. And I was surprised to find that one such release is the self released debut […]
“We continue to storm forward with no real sense of direction or purpose. We repeat ourselves, retell the same lies and never change. We all have become stagnant and entitled.. We know better, but we do it anyway. We are greedy, lazy and tired. We are destroying everything we’ve worked to preserve and shitting in […]
I wanted to like the debut from Pittsburgh’s Abysme so much more. It’s got the founding member of Funerus, Brad Heiple in its ranks and it’s a dusty old school Swedish styled death metal record with a classic Nihilist guitar tone and loose sloppy Autopsy influenced riffs. However, the song writing never quite matches the level […]
I probably don’t have to expand on the style of this album assuming you can see the cover art, see the band moniker and the label and song titles like “Lithographies of Recurrent Splatter”, “Impudent Dissection of the Perfidious Idol” and “Fermentation of Prosthetic Remains” . Power metal this is not. Infected Flesh were a […]
Kansas City’s Torn the Fuck Apart (hitherto known as TTFA) don’t like religion, particularly Christianity and all things Christ related. One look at the cover art, the album title and song titles like “Bashed in Prophets”, “Decapitated Disciples”, “Father of Filth” as well as the numerous samples from movies and TV (Louis CK, George Carlin […]
Definition of PINNACLE ; the highest point of development or achievement Definition of BEDLAM; A place or situation of noisy uproar and confusion. So, basically the highest achievement in a noisy uproar and confusion? Yup, Id say that about covers it. Four albums into their comeback from a 6 year hiatus and some pretty legendary […]
Ok, will someone please explain to me how this isn’t an Asphyx record? It’s the trio that released the legendary The Rack (Eric Daniels, Martin Van Drunen and Bob Bagchus) two of which went on to form the post Asphyx band Soulburn, as well as a current member of the the new Asphyx (Alwin Zuur) […]
What happens if you take the devastating, brown note heft of The Acacia Strain and mix with Christian ideals? You get Pittsburgh’s Those Who Fear, that’s fucking what. So now let me continue and tell the three of you that will actually read this even more. Ive said for a few reviews now that Facedown […]
I have a bit of an emotional attachment to Corpus Mortale, their 2001 EP Succumb to the Superior was one of my very early reviews for digitalmetal.com, and exposed me to the Danish style of death metal I had not experienced yet, prompting me to seek out Iniquity and others. But I lost touch with […]
With their third album on as many labels, Sweden’s Zonaria are if anything, anything persistent and consistent. Their previous albums released on Pivotal Recordings (2007s Infamy and the Breed) and then Nuclear Blast (2009s The Cancer Empire) respectively were a melding of mildly futuristic melodic death metal glossed over with Dimmu Borgir symphonics and that […]
Released the same time as Engulfed‘s EP, Through the Eternal Damnation, Through the Ages is the debut from Greece’s war mongering quartet War Possession, and while Engulfed seems to have dropped the Bolt Thrower influence from their Burial Invocation days, War Possession is happy to carry on the mantle and deliver 4 tracks and 21 […]
Warning: this review breaks the record for Opeth references. Initially, the first few minutes of this unannounced release hinted at some sorted of pretentious, Proggy, SPV/Sensory type release, with wafting clean vocals and sharp, stuttering progressive riffage. However, about three minutes into opener “Glimpse of What May Be” guitarist Daniel Cordoba unleashed a Akerfeldt-ian bellow, […]
Colorado’s Execration aren’t doing anything particularity innovative or new within death metal on their sophomore album, but they do death metal pretty well and add a little resin driven intellectual brutality to their standard US death metal throes. With a sound I can only term as “Colorado-ish” there’s some Cephalic Carnage complexity (especially vocally) and […]
Sorry this review is so late, but ya know Rome wasn’t built in a day… I wasn’t ever really that enamored with Romulus, the first release of Ex Deo, the epic, Roman themed side project headed by Kataklysm frontman Maurizio Iacono and most of his Kataklysm buddies. It seemed little more than unused Kataklysm riffs […]
I’ve had a hard time getting into any of Zeitgeister Music’s recent releases (Woburn House, Skarab, Klabautamann), but after seeing so much praise heaped upon Valborg and their previous albums and most current release Nekrodepression, by many of my respected peers and close friends in the metal journalism world, I felt I should give another […]
From the label who in 2012 alone was responsible for the likes of Resurgency, Ectovoid, Flagellated Seraph, Malfeitor and Decaying comes yet more very tasty old school death metal by way of two EPs from Turkey’s Engulfed and Greece’s War Possession. Formed by two members of the now defunct Burial Invocation, who themselves released a […]
Hailing from Sweden and with a name like Fetus Stench, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the debut full length album from this death metal act was of the old school, Stockholm-y kind. However, rather than dust off some old Entombed riffs and go for the obvious sound, Fetus Stench go for a different influence […]
Those of you who enjoyed releases from Canada’s Cephalectomy including their sophomore effort Eclipsing the Dawn and their final release- the free download- An Epitaph for Tranquility take note. Barra Xul is basically the same band and sound by two of Cephalectomy‘s main guys, founder/guitarist/vocalist Cory Andrews (also of Select and Dismember) and bassist Scott […]
As is the norm around this time of year, myself and others in the field are still filtering through the slew of late 2012 releases and as is often the case, unearthing late year gems that simply could not get reviewed in time for the end of 2012. And such is the case with the […]
Remember when Mastodon were a good underground metal band rather than the commercialized, major label juggernaut they have become? Remember Remission and Leviathan? Philadelphia’s Swarm of Arrows remember, and with The Great Seekers of Lesser Life they have delivered a slightly burlier, gruffer take on Mastodon-ish rumbling, tumbling metal. First off, all four members deliver […]