Stop me if you’ve heard this before – the best technical death metal album of the year is Ominous Ruin, no wait! it’s Hannes Grossman, oh no, shit it’s Ophidian I.  That’s it! PHEW.  I hope nothing else comes out that will change that…. Obscura , Archspire, and First Fragment “Oh, Hai!” Shit. Listen, there’s a […]

Do you like Summoning?  Do you llike long songs with epic orchestration over militant, mid-paced black metal with songs of ancient battles and distant lands played by a European duo? Do you wish Caladan Brood would hurry the fuck up and release a follow-up to Echoes of Battle? If you answered yes to any of […]

For two albums now, Dani Filth has delivered a reinvigorated Cradle of Filth since gutting the lineup after 2012s forgetful The Manticore and Other Horrors. Both 2015s Hammer of the Witches and 2017s Cryptoriana – The Seductiveness of Decay, with the same re-vamped line-up, delivered classic Cradle of Filth writing and energy that signaled Dani […]

I’ve been covering Inferi since 2009s End of an Era, and since then they have become The Artisan Era’s flagship band and one of the mainstays of the melodic/shredding technical death metal genre in the US scene. They have not been super prolific, with 2 more albums, an EP and a redo of End of […]

I had no idea what to expect when checking out New Jersey’s Replicant, I just had not heard a Transcending Obscurity release in quite a while and while grabbing the killer new Abscession, I checked out Veilburner’s excellent Lurkers in the Capsule of Skull (due to the review here), and Replicant’s second album, Malignant Reality on […]

There was a time in the late 90s early 00s that I was all fucking in on Viking metal, Enslaved were still sort of Viking based, Moonsorrow were releasing downright epic albums like Voimasta ja kunniasta and Kivenkantaja, Amon Amarth were blowing up and releasing albums every month. And at the forefront of my Viking […]

‘M’ or ‘Mories’ or his real name, Maurice De Jong, as he is known here, is the Netherlands’ black metal version of Rogga Johansson. He’s in double-digit bands, though I’ve onlyheard  Gnaw Their Tongues,  and arguably his most known creation and De Magia Veterum, as I reviewed releases by both on this very site.   And […]

Like it or not, deathcore is having a pretty solid comeback over the last couple or years, and it appears to be peaking in 2021 with Unique Leader Records leading the charge with releases from the likes of Distant, Osiah, To The Grave, Humanity’s Last Breath, Mental Cruelty, Worm Shepherd, Bound In Fear, (a few […]

Very late last year, I was introduced to Boston’s Seven Spires, with their second album, Emerald Seas, and immediately fell in love with them, largely due to vocalist Adrienne Cowan (who surprisingly used to be the keyboard player for deathcore act, Winds of Plague). Her range and power on songs like “Bury You” , “Succumb” […]

Hot on the heels of solid, recent, and upcoming majestic, melodic, second wave black metal homages like Warmoon Lord, Arna, Sinira, fellow one man project, Winter Eternal, Kjeld, Wooden Throne and such, comes prolific lone Aussie ‘Nightwolf’ (also in Blood Stronghold and Eternum) and his 5th releases in as many years. And while it’s my […]

“Our stories won’t be written with ink and mirth. But carved in flesh and the soul of the earth. The whispers of the wind will cease to be. All we hear is the wailing of the oceans plea” – “The Archive”. Arkivet (Archive) is the third album from stellar, fast-rising new Swedish melodic black metal […]

The debut album, Misery Sermon from these track suit and mask wearing Russian deathcore thugs was one of my guilty pleasures of 2017, but then they went a bit quiet for a couple of years. But a flurry of singles and videos in 2019, 2020 and 2021 (and even got the famed metal gunner/drummer treatment […]

The UKs Necronautical (which I’m now learning means ‘to explore death’, and not something maritime related…) first appeared on my radar their second effort, 2016s, The Endurance at Night on the then reborn , legendary UK label, Cacophonous Records. They were a solid , enjoyable, but unspectacular symphonic black metal act with innate Cradle of […]

Much like Warmoon Lord‘s recent opus, you can tell just from the moniker, the ‘not Emperor’s Into the Nightside Eclipse art work at all’,  cover art and song titles (“Crossing the Blackest Skies”, “The Illusive Wings of Death”, “Crown of Stars”, ) and the cover of Gates of Ishtar‘s “Dawn of Flames”, what you are […]

I wish I had heard Canadian, one person act Unreqvited, before I reviewed the excellent EP from Christian Cosentino earlier this spring as they would have been an excellent reference point for that review. And there are so few for this style of outside of the box, happy but despondent, organic shoegaze/black metal past the […]

I grabbed this EP (originally self released digital last year) from North Carolina’s duo Snogard (Dragons spelled backwards apparently?), due to the cover art, with looks like a cross between Ian Miller artwork, and something I would have drawn on my 7th grade notebooks, as well as EP themes that explore different protagonists/antagonists in fantasy, […]

Despite being one of the early deathcore bands to successfully add keyboards to their repertoire and become more of a blackened deathcore band 4-5 albums ago, Carnifex has been surpassed by the likes of Shadow of Intent, Mental Cruelty and Lorna Shore when it comes to this supposed  ‘blackened deathcore’ sound (and you could make […]

Here’s a release I completely overlooked earlier this spring, but as I was searching through the vast Teethofthedivine promo library in search of melodic black metal similar to stuff I recently reviewed by Warmoon Lord, Winter Eternal and Runespell, I stumbled across the short but excellent gem of a debut from this Spanish black metal […]

The ever productive Matthew Schott is back with another Sxuperion album, that’s 6 in 6 years, along with a few splits and Eps as well his output in Garden of Hesperides,  Valdur and Oreamnos. I reviewed 2019s Endless Spiritual Embodiment but never got around to covering 2020s Omniscient Pulse, (Sorry Matt, I’ll blame covid). However, […]

Sun of the Suns is a new band from Italy featuring members of tech-death act Carnality, deathcore stompers The Modern Age Slavery, and symphonic death metal band Nightland, but also features  Francesco Paoli from Fleshgod Apocalypse helping out on drums. And for once, the FFO recommendations in the promo actually nail it pretty hard, mentioning […]

Sweden’s Havamal ( ‘the words of Odin’), is a relatively new Norse/Viking-themed melodic death metal band with one album under their belt from 2019, Tales from Yggdrasil, which I have not heard. I was in the mood for something Viking -y to tide me over until the new Thyrfing, and this has fit the bill […]

As I said in my review of Passéisme’s album of the year contender, Eminence, Antiq Records is becoming a very good, consistent label, plying black metal that’s a bit medieval , a bit avant-garde and sometimes both, as in the case of the French act, Ascète and their excellent debut album, Calamites & les Calamités. Also, […]

You are starting to hear and feel the impact of covid and the chaotic final year of Trump’s administration on some albums being put out now. Albums that were written in seclusion, online, in depressive states, in rage. I think we are seeing a real creative burst in the metal scene, that might be one […]

And so the killer, 2021 Bolt Thrower/ Hail of Bullets worship/homage continues, this time from notable Australian duo, Dave Haley (drums/recording) and Jason Peppiatt (vocals, guitar, bass, artwork) of Psycroptic. And if the prospect of these two delivering 8 songs about various battles in history doesn’t give you a howitzer-sized boner, then move along. Of […]

Fuck. So back in February, I swore that Ominous Ruin‘s Amid Voices That Echo in Stone would be the tech death album of the year. Then shortly after that, Stortgren’s Impermanence,  was definitely going to take that mantle. But then Hannes Grossman dropped To Where the Light Retreats, earlier this summer, and THAT album was […]