Despite the power metal cover, Sweden’s Azure deliver a pretty solid slab of melodic and accessible black/war metal, and thanks to Deathgasm, King of Stars-Bearer of Dark now has a US license from Pulverized Records. This is as ‘nice’ as black metal gets, with the catchy restraint of early Norther meets the epic dynamics of […]

Here’s some pretty entertaining and humorous grindcore that takes elements from Cephalic Carnage (bizarre tangents, love of weed) and early Pungent Stench (humor, guitar tone, vocals, song structures) and manages to squeeze everything into one highly packed bowl of resin infused fun.Though still grindcore, Serious Grind manage to deliver more than just 30 second spurts […]

Well, here it is folks. The moment of this album arriving had me giddier than when my first real girlfriend let me touch her jiggly and moist bits for the first time. This is comeback album that for me, far exceeds the hype of Suffocation, Obituary, Celtic Frost, and whoever else the fuck has decided […]

The word melodic gets thrown around like food when Anna Nicole Smith eats a buffet; a word chucked into death metal to show something other than sheer brutality, but other than a few solos, what makes death metal truly melodic?.Arsis, that’s what. Let me tell you, the 13 minute center piece of this criminally teasing […]

Of all the hardcore EP’s chucked at me over the last few years, the self titled EP from this California band still gets regular airplay. Killing The Dream also get addition exposure when I play the excellent Embrace the End album as guitarists Joel Adams and Bart Mullis moonlight in that slighter heavier death core […]

I’ll admit that while Osculum Obscenum and The Fourth Dimension are two of my favorite death metal albums ever, everything past The Fourth Dimension never really impressed my despite the widespread acclaim of albums like Abducted and The Final Chapter. The final nail in the coffin for me was the god awful Catch 22 and […]

“ONCE AGAIN WE BRING ARMAGEDDON!” Apt opening to start the album as “At The Entrance to Hells Unholy Fire” kicks off album number four from this legitimate Swedish super group comprised of Lord K Philipson (House of Usher, Leukemia, Dark Funeral, God Among Insects), Jörgen Sandström (ex-Grave, ex-Entombed, ex- Krux, Vicious Art), Petter S. Freed […]

With all the all the underwhelming metalcore Metal Blade has churned out this year (As I Lay Dying, The Black Dahlia Murder, Unearth, Winter Solstice, The Red Death, Neaera), you’d forgive me for being cynical when broached with another Iron Clad Recordings (Unearth’s Trevor Phipps’ label) licensed effort. Then you’d have to also forgive me […]

Considering the vast wealth of deathcore and tech/math core that has assaulted my ears this year, New York’s Abeyance shouldn’t have even registered on the Richter scale, even more so considering their rather questionable choice of label. But as it stands Experience is the Words that are Written is actually pretty solid.  I’ve seen a […]

As hard as Lifeforce is plugging this as Entombed meets Dissection meets Mastodon meets High On Fire, I’m only buying a quarter of their hype; the Swedish death metal quarter. Withered, for all intents, purposes, regardless of origin (Georgia-hence the Mastodon plugs), name dropping and forced label based pigeon holing, stand toe to toe with […]

Adding to this year’s bumper crop of burly, breakdown inspired “death-core” come California’s Winds of Plague and their Recorse Records (based out of Independence, MO, not 2 hrs from my house) debut and for those of you that enjoy the likes of All Shall Perish, With Dead Hands Rising, Despised Icon, Embrace the End, Antagony, […]

Metal Blade has a knack for finding highly touted, unknown (mostly metalcore) bands that garnered considerable buzz with debut records and signing them for their subsequent efforts; The Black Dahlia Murder, Unearth, As I Lay Dying, The Red Chord, Into The Moat, Premonitions of War, Born From Pain, etc. And now they have done it […]

Filthy, bristling, dirty, crusty punk/hardcore/death ‘n’ roll from Canada with hooded members of In Dying Days, Ire, The Black Hand, Cobra Noir is a no brainer for fans of Cursed. I’ll get straight to it kids; After two venomous but rather predictable tracks “Lazarus” and “The Treatment”, Cobra Noir delivers the thunderously rocking “Eucharist”, a […]

I hope Abacus Recordings, Lifeforce, Nuclear Blast and Metal Blade are reading this because considering the recent releases by Embrace the End, Animosity and All Shall Perish, California’s rumblemasters Antagony are every bit as good within the confines of the so called death-core genre. Most will groan at yet another mix of death metal lurch […]

Goddamn this is good; swelling, caustic yet melodic post hardcore that drips with rending, paranoid intensity at every chord shift. Imagine the biting, jangly discordance of Circle Takes the Square mixed with the ambient, simplistic note progressions and pulse of Amanda Woodward (so then by default also Neurosis). Throw in some painfully screamed female vocals […]

I’d seen lots of positive press about this New Jersey quintet featuring former members of Sworn Enemy, One 4 One and Train of Thought, but I never knew such a hardcore underground, respected lineup could be responsible for this slab of commercialized, mainstream drivel. If you took New York Hardcore and put it repeatedly through […]

First, big props to Necroharmonic to picking up the ball that Satanic Perversions dropped by getting this long sought after re-issue out. Secondly, shame on all you other labels for not jumping the gun and getting this out before now. For those that don’t know, Gorement was one of the bands that spawned from the […]

Canada has done it again. After the initial invasion of Cryptopsy Kataklysm and Gorguts laid the ground work of musical insanity, bands like Neuraxis, Quo Vadis, Ion Dissonance and Despised Icon to continue to pummel these shores with ridicoulously complex metal. Add Beneath the Massacre to the list of impressive Canadian bands that can rip […]

My only other exposure to Eastern European metalcore is Poland’s rather excellent Faust Again, but Croatia’s Amok have also proved to be ample bearers of the metalcore flag with a short but solid and crisp debut album that’s firmly rooted in The Black Dahlia Murder, Darkest Hour and Unearth.With the usual flaws of a young […]

I like Obituary, really I do. And I wanted to like their reunion album after an 8-year layoff, really I did. I happen to think that Cause of Death is arguably one of the top five death metal albums ever, but this album (as well as the subsequent albums) only serves to cement one fact; […]

Though most of you may groan, for me, 2005 has been a stellar year for the so called “death-core” genre (I use the term broadly to describe music that mixes death metal, grindcore and hardcore/metalcore); Embrace the End, The Taste of Blood, The Number 12 Looks Like You, Ion Dissonance, The Red Chord, Antagony, Animosity, […]

Truth be told Atreyu, is the meekest of the Hot Topic ‘metalcore’ triumvirate (rounded out by Avenged Sevenfold and Bleeding Through), being easily more accessible than their peers but having just enough metal seeping into their punky, hardcore laced, catchy visage to be more respectable than Silverstein or Thrice. Still, Atreyu and their ilk remain […]

Poor old Metal Blade, they can’t catch break. Hoping to bottle the magic of their prior albums, they signed Unearth, The Red Chord and As I Lay Dying, in hopes of riding the hype their debut albums garnered in the metalcore scene. Alas though both, The Oncoming Storm and Clients were over hyped and under […]

Discounting Moonsorrow’s (for me, mildly disappointing) album, its been a pretty barren year for great Viking metal, with even a few rotten eggs thrown in (fellow Germans Iuvenes, Suidakra), so when I finally got my hands on this Germans band’s highly regarded album, I was giddy, boy was it worth the wait. Part Ensiferum, part […]

The French seem to have found a niche with expansive avant-garde post hard-core noise with the likes of Comity, Amanda Woodward, Bumblebees, etc, but this has to stand out as the best yet. This is soooo damn good folks that I’m not sure simple words can convey its brilliance. With feet firmly planted in the […]