Finland’s prolific, premier folk rocker return with album number four and after teasing me with three albums of superb folkish, pub rock littered with buzz killing somber moments, the forest clan have finally unleashed the ultimate, feel good, forest rock, beer swilling, sylph moshing fun fest. As I mentioned, Korpiklaani’s last three albums were a […]
Does anyone really care that Six Feet Under has released their seventh (original) album earlier this year? Apparently not; I didn’t get the usual hype from Metal Blade’s PR folks, just a discreet, late single package with little fanfare and I never saw much press online or in print concerning Commandent and I figured it […]
It’s been a while since I heard a great, traditional metalcore record (Life In Your Way’s Waking Giants is the last really great pure metalcore record I enjoyed). With so many bands either trying the death, grind or pop up their sound or just try too hard to be zany and different, its seems, actual […]
My apologies to the readership here, but things are going to be a bit ‘core’ for a while as I wade through my considerable pile of angry young men trying their hand at various offshoots of hardcore and metalcore, not to worry though Nile and Gorefest reviews are coming shortly. LA’s The Orangeburg Massacre are […]
I really wanted to like this album due to the killer artwork and card digipack it came in, however Seattle’s The Assailant are no more than another drop in the ‘caustic math metal, screamo, spazz-core with a bit of experimentation’ ocean. With the press sheet dropping words like Botch, pg 99 and Fugazi, the 8 […]
With former members of Confine, Grade, and SeventyEightDays, you’d expect Ontario’s To The Lions to be a well oiled, conviction fueled hardcore machine, and you’d be right. Mostly mid tempo, chunky, fluff free, passionate urgent hardcore rooted on the early 90’s scene (i.e. Integrity, Earth Crisis, Ringworm, Bloodlet, Turmoil) is the forte of To The […]
I haven’t really given Carnal Forge any thought or attention since their 1998 debut, Whose Gonna Burn? as all the subsequent albums seemed to blaze by in a tight but lifeless vortex of neo-thrash, but when I heard the band had a new vocalist and had taken a more melodic direction, I decided to give […]
I’ll admit, the only Samael record I really enjoyed was Passage, as I found the bands early black metal offering a tad overrated, and their last two efforts no more than a commercial foray into electronic/Industrial, Rammstein territory. Well, here’s a second Samael album for me to enjoy, as Solar Soul basically takes the elements […]
Ha-this is so awesome. Vancouver’s 3 Inches of Blood return for their anticipated 2nd album and the cursed Ozzfest appearances, and as second albums should be, everything is bigger, better and more METAL! The sheer, guiltless enjoyment that the band’s old school thrash meets NWBHM meets melodic death metal meets Robert E. Howard is as […]
I’m pretty sure I’m one of the few metal journalists that think Angelcorpse were a tad over-rated. Sure, albums like Exterminate and The Inexorable were good black/death metal albums, but I think most folks were caught up in the fact that a US band were going toe to toe with their Scandinavian counterparts in the […]
So here is the second release on Leon Macy’s (Mithras) new label, and it’s an altogether different release than the excellent Sarpanitum album. Sepia Dreamer is an atmospheric two piece instrumental outfit consisting of Welshman Sam Brokenshaw and a Swede, Jonas Wrennige. The music isn’t your usual instrumental affair (i.e. just metal without vocals), but […]
“Dear Profound Lore Records, Please submit $1256.56 to my bank account for the purchase of new speakers and stereo system as well as several visits to the ear doctor due to playing the new album from Georgia’s The Angelic Process. You see, after hardly being able to hear the opening strands of Weighing Souls With […]
So I suddenly find myself innundated with a plethora of deathcore releases by bands like Misericordiam, The Partisan Turbine, Rose Funeral, Whitechapel, Suicide Silence, Success Will Write Apocalypse Across The Sky and many others, yet the most low profile, yet surprisingly competent is this self titled debut EP from Ontario’s Dear Black Diary. Though hardly […]
There are albums, that no matter how many times you listen to them, you just can’t get your head around them. Ironically, a lot of them have come out on The End Records, and in the case of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s In Glorious Times, no amount of mind altering substances will ease the process of […]
As far as Christian metalcore is concerned, with 2006’s Pride of the Wicked, Pennsylvania’s War of Ages elevated themselves into the same realm as As I Lay Dying after a pretty ho hum self titled debut in 2005. Well, they must also have felt the same about the debut as here it is again, rerecorded […]
So in my recent discovering of all things black metal, one band that kept coming up as a band I had to hear was Sweden’s Watain. Lo and behold, Sworn to the Dark shows up in my mailbox and I play it expecting a nasty, evil and malevolent tide of blackened blasphemy. Instead what I […]
Though an ambitious debut from these Utah youngsters, there’s is just too much popular music scene culture colliding all at once. Although rooted in the post rock tones of Isis, IATO also throw in some progressive, angular rock a la modern Dillinger and The Deftones as well as some emo/screamo quirkiness for good, kid appealing […]
This is going to be interesting…. After two lauded releases of visceral, chaotic and brilliant tech-metal, Canada’s Ion Dissonance, with new, more hardcore sounding singer Kevin McCaughey at the helm, appear to have made a slight tweak to their sound, and one I actually prefer, though most may be a bit on the fence. With […]
There was a time when a new Finntroll release would have had my spewing troll semen all over myself in a gushing review about 45 seconds after the release date. So why then has it taken my so long to review the 5th album from a bad that has arguably been one of my top […]
While I enjoy the far more fruity elements of traditional Viking metal such as beer hall wocals and chants and galloping synths and such, I wish a few more bands plied a slightly darker, more brutal visage of Viking metal. Enter New Jersey’s Helcaraxë. Named after the huge wastes of grinding ice from J.R.R. Tolkien’s […]
I’m sure these re-issues, which are now apparently available for the first time domestically in the US are no big deal to 95% of black metal fans seeing as most die hard fans no doubt already own Marduk’s first four albums. However, for black metal noobs like me whose first exposure to Marduk wasn’t until […]
At least I don’t feel quite as guilty stating this album’s rather predictable take on female fronted Goth metal as I did with Elis and the tragic death of their front woman, Sabine Dünser. As with virtually all of Napalm’s Goth metal roster, you pretty much know what you are getting; operatic female vocals layering […]
When greeted with the artwork of Vintersorg’s sixth album, Solens Rötter, I hoped Vintersorg (AKA Andreas Hedlund) and Co had returned to their folk/pagan roots after three albums of more cosmic, philosophical and to me downright disappointing material. Well, apparently Hedlund’s time in Borknagar has rubbed off, as Solens Rötter (roughly meaning ‘origin of the […]
Despite the Pantera based album title, Canada’s Senate actually deliver one of the more solid self released efforts heard that’s up there with the likes of The Fifth Sun, Martriden, and Empyrean Eclipse as far as well put together, well packaged and well played self released efforts. Armed with a Tue Madsen mastering job, as […]
After a debut EP (which was subsequently re-issued shortly thereafter), here is the debut full length from Boston hardcore outfit, Death Before Dishonor and while not really delivering anything new to the genre, the more classic East Coast approach replaces the burly, more Hatebreed-ish sounds of the EP. With more of an emphasis on punky […]