Simply being on Transmission Records should clue you in as to this album’s style. Sharing the label with Epica and After Forever should get your female fronted, Goth Rock Spidey sense tingling away, as Asrai deliver basically the exact same sound; lush, epic and heavy on the dramatics and emotion. Still, while not quite Nightwish, […]

Someone forgot to tell Scarlet Records that melodic death metal was dead, what with Withering Surface’s Force the Pace and this high octane little number, they seem in denial to admit the relative complacency of the genre. What makes Italy’s Disarmonia Mundi so interesting is the presence of Soilwork’s Bjorn Strid on vocals, and realistically […]

The spate of high profile U.S. metal acts continues as Beyond The Embrace vie for the attention of Shadows Fall, All That Remains, Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God fans, with their second offering. Their debut Against The Elements held some promise amid its In Flames/Iron Maiden worship, but their three-guitar attack was understated and […]

I like Skyfire, so I was more than a little surprised that upon shopping for the import version of prior album Mind Revolution, I found out this, their third album, had been released on Spanish label Arise Records. I was also a little surprised that this disappoints somewhat. Skyfire, along with Norther, have headed the […]

Someone please give Killswitch Engage and All That Remains a hug-they’re having major heart issues. Anyhoo, I don’t know about you guys, but Alive? Or Just Breathing, was kind of my first heavy exposure to metalcore on a grand scale, despite other bands forging the way many years before and my quick souring on the […]

I’ll admit, this surprised the shit out of me. Hailing from Kentucky and with a pretty solid discography behind them, I was expecting the usual US goregrind but instead got some fairly solid melodic black/death war metal with a distinct European lean and even some black thrash tendencies. Although not super tight or crisp and […]

Scotland. Home of the Haggis, and……. erm, I dunno, Scottish people? Who would have thought that one of the best death metal albums of 2004 would have risen from the craggy depths of Dumbarton? And while Mithras could certainly lay claim to being the UK’s saviors of extreme metal, Man Must Die have a far […]

I can’t really say Italy has a solid stranglehold on the doom genre, but after this, their third album, Rome’s Void of Silence at least seem ready to make others take notice. After the horrifically bad Carinou album, I was reluctant to give this a listen but it turns out, VOS are a pretty creative, […]

It’s always hard reviewing a genre you don’t particularly get, but when graced with power metal, grim black metal or grindcore, I try my best to be objective and at least recognize ability and talent no matter the genre. However, in the case of grindcore, a few releases have found their way into my album […]

With all the metalcore suddenly gracing Metal Blade’s roster, it’s sure nice to see this veteran act still on the label and still churning out quality if rudimentary, but ultimately fun old school death metal. The easy thing to do would be cut and paste either their Revelation Nausea or Blood Rapture reviews and change […]

I’ll admit, my review of 2002’s God Was Created was slightly overzealous, but Vehemence’s second full length album was still worthy of my album of the year title, so with their follow up I’ll try to be a little more level headed and objective, but still, Vehemence are on of my favorite bands. If anything, […]

While the prospect of a Kreator meets Carnal Forge or Dew Scented offspring has some appeal theoretically, its actual manifestation is far less promising. Hailing from Wolfsberg, Germany, Uppercut have taken the classic German thrash sound and spiced and tightened it up a bit with a sort of Swedish death/thrash razors edge, and like I […]

Formed from the ashes of legendary doom acts Dusk and Crawl, Wisconsin’s Aphotic have been hard at work forging a new band to carry on the ethereal, natural doom metal of their prior acts. Stillness Grows is the miserable fruits of their labor; 3 demo EPs on this one album. 2000’s self titled demo, 2001’s […]

US black metal just never seems to find its way to these ears, and when it does it’s generally the grimier, warlike stylings of Epoch of Unlight and Forest of Impaled or the raw frozen grimness of Goatwhore and Leviathan. In the symphonic/atmospheric category, only Vesperian Sorrow has graced these ears with any true mimicry […]

We all know Willowtip does death metal and grind as good as or better than any other US label, but how will they fare in the European dominated melodic/black genre? Fucking phenomenally. As with most Willowtip releases, Arsis’s offering is the extremity tipped, red headed, bastard child of a parent genre. Arisis is to melodic […]

Do you miss old Kataklysm? Do you miss the mystical hyper-blasting and over the top lyrical, otherworldly vocalizations of Sylvain Houde? Well, Country mates Cephalectomy are for you dear reader.Nova Scotia’s Cephalectomy have released a superb album that re-creates the Northern hyper-blasting of Sorcery; insanely fast brutal death/grind with surprising amounts of intricate, layered melodies […]

With a moniker like Vicious with and album title like Vile, Vicious & Victorious this band set themselves some pretty high expectations that they had better damn well fulfill. And this Gothenburg lot gives it a pretty good try, but it isn’t quite as promising as their namesake. A solid, competent take on thrashy, energetic, […]

A black metal project featuring members of Unmoored, Incapacity, Solar Dawn, Satariel and Setherial, the bloodlines of Torchbearer are certainly solid, but the results are surprisingly average. Sitting squarely in the blazing but melodic black metal realms shared by Naglfar, Necrophobic and The Legion, Yersinia Pestis (the virus that causes The Black Death) delivers plenty […]

As tempting as it was to cut and paste my review of Fragments of Unbecoming’s recent album, I thought you the reader and the band deserve slightly more than that. What other than melodic death metal would you expect from a band from Gothenburg with former Gardenian drummer Thim Blom in their ranks? As to […]

So here is album number 6 from one of Sweden’s pioneering and longstanding death metal stalwarts. A new Dismember album is always an event for me, a musical milestone I look forward too with glee, and while my fanboy approach to the band has to be stifled somewhat for an objective review, I find myself […]

I distinctly remember not being that impressed with the debut album The Bound Feed the Gagged from this Michigan quintet, but also sharing the sentiment of the Teeth of the Divine writer that reviewed that album in thinking “I’ve not heard the last from this lot.” And here they are with album number 2, and it’s a […]

Ye gads, where to start on this one. Two Polish immigrants relocated to Canada unleashed unsupervised upon a recording studio to record their second album. This is one is those albums you will either love or loathe, and much of that will depend on your state of consciousness. Those preferring a continual state of altered […]

I specifically chose to review this on the heels of the recent Veneficum offering, as they both offer synth laden efforts of melodic black metal from the US, and while Veneficum essentially get it all right, Minnesota’s Epicurean are bright eyed and full of promise with some issues to fix before they can compete on […]

Thanks to our friends at Candlelight, this album is now available in the US and it was worth the wait. One of my favorite bands has released the album they’ve hinted at for 2 decent but hard to find efforts. Both Cybersonic Superchrist (2000, Pavement Music) and When We Are Done Your Flesh Will Be […]

Hailing from the grim, frost bitten realms of Brisbane, Australia, Astriaal play voracious black metal that lies squarely between the truest classic style and a slightly more modern razor sharp, melodic take on the genre. Comparisons could be made to Dissection, Naglfar and Marduk (and to these ears, Angel Corpse), but Astriaal make the sound […]