While Decapitated, Behemoth and Vader are considered Polish death metal royalty, there’s a second tier of the Polish death metal aristocracy headed up by the likes of Yattering, Trauma, Crionics and underlooked veterans, Hate. Not only buried under the prestige of their own country mates, but also 2008’s slew of killer death metal, comes Hate’s […]
Could it be that death metal is making a comeback in the good ol’ UK? With Mithras, Man Must Die, Detrimentum, Spearhead, Sarpanitum and now the debut EP from Porkfarm, it appears so…. Compacting enough brutality and savagery into 6 songs to warrant any death metal fans attention, Blood Harvest is a death metal/grindcore mash […]
If I actually review a self released demo here, you know I must like it. There’s a pretty specific target audience for this very tasty, very professionally packaged and produced little 6 track EP (5 songs, one intro) and that’s Killswitch Engage fans. But rather than simply deliver Killswitch Engage mimicry, Portland’s Across the Sun […]
When a band changes their name, it’s usually for the worse-usually a shift in style to be more acceptable, commercial or just downright not metal (see Covenant, Cemetery, … And Oceans, etc). However, the UK’s Gorerotted, after 3 fairly mediocre, stylistically undecided albums, decided to start anew and change their name to The Rotted. The […]
It’s ironic that I recently rewatched both Terminator movies this weekend (which hold up very well many years later) as I geared up to review this Arnold Schwarzenegger side project from As I Lay Dying’s Tim Lambesis. With Destroy The Runner’s Chad Ackerman providing the surprisingly good Arnie impersonations between songs and Tim Lambesis (along […]
Strap on your sandals and fur codpiece-its folk metal time. And what folk metal this is! Culling from the likes of Finntroll, Amon Amarth, Turisas, Bal-Sagoth and Ensiferum, Germany’s Equilibrium, after an already fantastic debut in Turis Fratyr, have released arguably the most complete, enjoyable, epic and down right brilliant folk metal album since Jaktens […]
I’ve never really been too into instrumental music, with a passing, fleeting interest in the likes of Tides, Pelican, Red Sparowes and such. The last instrumental album I really got into was The Autumn Project’s The Burning Light, on Deepsend Records. Ironically, this album was supposed to be released on Deepsend Records, but instead got […]
Here’s a noisy, caustic spurt of modern grindcore/hardcore hybrid from Switzerland’s oddly named Yog, and while many bands are plying this sort of sonic chaos (Architect, Gaza, Khann, Romans, Nights Like These, Robinson, Harlots, early The Red Chord, Pig Destroyer, Fuck The Facts, all the Converge wannabe’s, etc) Yog do it very well, and actually […]
It’s been a turbulent year for straightedge moshers Liferuiner. After releasing No Saints, arguably the heaviest hardcore album of 2007, the singer was kicked out for allegedly having sex with a minor, then a label change and then fill in singer Danny Surjanac and drummer Shane Tyrer were recently arrested for 28 counts of graffiti. […]
I actually reviewed this album at another website a couple of years ago after it came out on Hope Prevails Productions, but now with a re-mastered sound, new artwork and a cover of Cynic’s “How Could I?”, I’m recalling how good this actually was and how well it stands up 3 years later. If the […]
I’ve always admired Deepsend Records, for their DIY ethic and ability to release records from fairly obscure bands that manage to compete with the larger named, larger label releases, and releases by the likes of Porkfarm, Dawn of Demise, Lecherous Nocturne, Exitium and such show the band has an eye for talent, and the debut […]
So, lets say you are one of the picky bastards that thought Opeth’s Watershed was too soft or too progressive, and wish bands like Dark Suns, Orakel, The Morningside, Farmakon, Adytum and such were even more like Opeth, just go ahead and grab the superb debut from Sweden’s, very, very talented newcomers In Mourning. While […]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with The Diseased and the Poisoned, sophomore effort from Carnifex (derived from the olde English word for ‘Executioner’). In fact, its arguably one of the better deathcore releases of the year-up there with Whitechapel’s This Is Exile-and therein lies the problem. The Diseased and the Poisoned and This Is Exile […]
Personally, (and I’ve thought this way since 2006’s Pride of the Wicked), Pennsylvania’s War of Ages are a far superior act to the far more hyped As I Lay Dying when it comes to Christian metalcore with a heavy Gothenburg lean. That fact is only cemented with the band’s excellent third album (not counting last […]
One could argue that sitting a very top of the deathcore heap are All Shall Perish and Tennessee’s three guitar wielding Whitechapel, who made quite an impressive racket and impressed even some grizzled death metal fans with their debut The Somatic Defilement. Now on Metal Blade Records, youngsters Whitechapel have delivered their anticipated sophomore album, and as […]
Much like the recent release of label mates A Thousand Times Repent, Georgia’s Hereafter An Odyssey deliver an EP (which was originally self released by the band) plying a style that’s been done to death (core), but do it well enough to warrant your attention if you are a fan of the genre, or new […]
After an acceptable but clichéd, Christian band, As I Lay Dying riff off debut in Saints, Destroy the Runner return with an even more commercial, poppy, mainstream album that makes the likes of Demon Hunter, The Devil Wears Prada, Farewell to Freeway and A Day to Remember look like Nile. Cleaner, whinier vocals and lots […]
After stealing The Funeral Pyre away from Creator Destructor Records and then re-issuing the band’s impressive second offering, here is the Prosthetic Records debut from California black metal act and there have been some slight changes from The Nature of Betrayal. The most obvious change is that keyboardist Daniella Jones is no longer in the […]
As a stop gap between the magnificent Eater of Birds and the next full length album, Cobalt and Profound Lore offer up this oddly titled, limited edition, 3 track, 44-minute EP that delivers one new track, a Nausea cover and the uncut, full 30 minute version of “Ritual Use of Fire”, which was split up […]
The debut, Memento Mori, from Atlanta’s Withered was a killer Stockholm sounding Doom/Death effort that got unfairly touted as a Mastodon clone due to the geography of the band. Three years later and Withered have returned with a new label and a slightly tweaked sound. But fear not the tweaking is a blacker, sicker, and […]
I vaguely remember long running Swiss act Sludge and their late 90’s releases (Sweet Daisy, The Well, Scarecrow Messiah), as they had a couple of Tomas Skogsberg/Sunlight Produced efforts, had Samael guitarist Makro in their ranks and plied a dirty mix of death doom and thrash that was a pretty heavy sound coming from the […]
Denmark’s Mevadio are either going to appeal to a lot of people or simply not appeal to a lot of people simply based on their wide variety of influences. Part thrash, part melo death, part Nu metal, part modern groove metal, Mevadio could appeal to the Strapping Young Lad/Skinlab/Machine Head crowd with their robust, beefy […]
It’s been a good few months for hardcore. Not stomp and romp bullshit like Terror, but real, punk rooted, emotional, melodic, tense hardcore; Brothers, Advent, Verse, Take It Back, Elder, Have Heart, and biggest of all the long awaited (at least for me) follow up to 2005’s killer debut, In Place Apart, from Sacramento’s Killing […]
I often get a lot of ‘odd’ albums for review here at teethofthedivine. Albums I can’t quite classify as metal, but also can’t completely discount, or albums I simply can’t describe adequately. The debut album from Philadelphia trio Spark Is A Diamond is all the above. In short, SIAD is a sort of screamo/punk band […]
On the surface, Florida’s Catalepsy, with their scrawled cookie cutter logo, 3 guitars (apparently dropped to G sharp, whatever that means), label affiliation (Jamey Jasta runs Stillborn), looks and deathcore tag seem like just another band of death metal wanna be kids riding the current trend of brutal deathcore along the lines of Rose Funeral, […]