Generation of Vipers’ Howl and Filth was, in my opinion, one of the top records from 2011. So it was with bated breath that I waited for the follow up, which arrived in October 2014 in the form of Coffin Wisdom.  Follow-ups to favorite albums are dangerous, because bands run the risk of letting fans […]

After listening to Harbinger, I am kicking myself for not having listened to Mutilation Rites earlier. Apparently this is their second full-length. From what I can gather of their previous work, Harbinger seems to represent a significant step in a more caustic, less melodic direction in the vein of many a band nowadays purveying in […]

I must confess I am not well versed in Krieg‘s back catalogue, being more familiar with Neil Jameson’s work with Twilight. I enjoyed The Black House but I haven’t listened to it in years. However, Krieg is a key USBM band that stands alongside the likes of Leviathan, Mutiilation, and Nachtmystium in terms of importance […]

Solbrud hails from Denmark. Although this is the band’s second full-length, it’s my first encounter with them. The sound displayed on Jaertegn is vaguely reminiscent of darker, more raw European folk-metal acts such as Ygg and Wodensthrone, although to my ears this actually shares more in common with Cascadian black metal, such as Wolves in […]

These days, talk about Nachtmystium is inseparable from talk about the group’s main man, Blake Judd. I have never been much of a follower of the people behind the music I listen to, for the reason that I am almost always disappointed to hear about what fucked up things they’re doing in their lives. I’ve […]

The physical release of Starless Aeon entails a cassette edition limited to 50 copies, which comes in an onyx stardream (whatever the hell that means) 6×6 box with the Starless Aeon sigil stamped on top in metallic silver ink, a 12×12 poster of the album artwork on parchment, the black, metallic-silver imprinted cassette itself in […]

The oddly named Pet Slimmers of the Year have released one of the best post-rock/metal albums I’ve heard in a long time, and it’s thanks in part to incorporation of elements not commonly found in post-rock: clean vocals, a sincere sense of melancholy usually reserved for gothic rock, and a thorough understanding of what makes […]

Newly-christened Bastard Feast, a band from Portland, Oregon formerly known as Elitist, have released their first album under the new name, and it is a doozy. Their previous offering, Fear in a Handful of Dust was an exhausting affair of blackened hardcore/sludge, standing comfortably but distinctly alongside the likes of Coffinworm or Generation of Vipers. […]

For all of the subgenre division going on in metal, there is an equal amount of incestuous cross-breeding. A growing number of bands now practice a fusion of crust punk, grindcore, and a dash of black/death metal–notably Nails, among others. Trap Them made a significant impact themselves a few years ago with their previous album, […]

I am only casually familiar with Wretched‘s previous release, Son of Perdition, which struck me as a more technical, less core-ish Carnifex, and belonging to that sort of ilk that has all the right ingredients but somehow didn’t manage to make it stick. With their fourth full-length offering, Cannibal, Wretched has stepped up the game […]

It is a rare and beautiful thing when a band is heavy not for heaviness’ sake, but as a necessity to reaching a deeper, more worthy goal of expression. Both the post-sludge and post-black genres of metal are oft-exploited templates for such explorations, and therein lies their crossover appeal. With Savage Gold, Brooklyn’s Tombs joins […]

Chronicles of Oblivion is the third full-length offering from France’s Deep in Hate, newly signed to Kaotoxin. A progression from the band’s initial sound, Chronicles of Oblivion sees the band playing a somewhat technical style of deathcore in the vein of Thy Art is Murder injected with a lethal strain of Decapitated-influenced modern death metal. […]

The sludge scene is very active in France, with bands like Year of No Light and Dirge releasing surprisingly, relevant post-metal, and other bands like Carne and Overmars (RIP) churning out music that pays more debt to the genre’s roots in hardcore. Newly established band Mur, hailing from Paris, falls into this latter camp, and […]

Psygnosis is a band from France, the home to many things weird and dark in the world of metal. Those two words describe Psygnosis, but beyond that, Human Be[ing] is difficult to define. It’s a difficult listen, for it pulls from many influences and often doesn’t even attempt to blend them. For the most part, […]

As any metalhead will tell you, one of the eminently satisfying things about being a metalhead is discovering an excellent band that no one else has heard. For me, one of those bands was The Mire. Those who were fortunate enough to hear the band’s Volume II EP from 2010 were treated with a surprisingly […]

Greece is not a pretty place to be right now. Allochiria takes their album’s name, Omonoia, from a neighborhood of Athens that has undergone significant urban decay. They play a style of post-metal that exists in a middle ground between the meditative atmospherics of bands like Pelican and mid-era Isis, and heavier sludge band akin […]

Shortly before recording this album, Erlen Meyer‘s drummer, Romain Djoudi, was killed in a motorcycle accident. The remaining band members’ feelings of anger and grief became direct inspiration during the subsequent recording of this harrowing album. Erlen Meyer play a heavy, dissonant brand of sludgy post-hardcore in the vein of Overmars and later-era Breach, a […]

Swedish band Soreption plays technical death metal with the syncopated, razor-sharp riffs of Decapitated with the machine-like djent-chugging of Aeon. Their first release on Unique Leader, Engineering the Void is their follow-up to their 2010 release Deterioration of Minds, which I only became aware of last year. Although heavily technical, Soreption fuses their convoluted riffs […]

Cleanteeth refer to themselves as “beard impregnating doom metal.” I’m not sure what exactly they mean by that. If this genre tag is a victim of the hyphen thief, it means that their music makes beards pregnant, a prospect which does not initially appeal to me. If not, they mean that their doom metal impregnates […]

Norway’s In Vain, according to the Encyclopaedia Metallum, plays Progressive Extreme Metal. Progressive is a tag that gets thrown around a lot and can mean practically anything. In In Vain’s case, the “progressive” is the same as applies to Borknagar or Emperor but to a lesser extent. In Vain tempers their progressive tendencies with a […]

While subgenres in metal tend to diversify (think of the many iterations of black metal or death metal going around these days), some genres seem natural pairs and have coalesced into genres of their own. Take for instance black metal and sludge. Ville Morgue, the first full-length offering from France’s Carne, plays riff-driven sludge metal […]

Alcest is one of the very few bands for which I say: if you like it, you like it; if you don’t, you don’t. There is nothing bad about it. It needs to be taken on its own terms, and once it is, whatever opinion you form about it is your own, and it’s okay. […]

Celeste, a member of the still-burgeoning French black metal scene delivers its fourth full-length album, a solid, double-disc offering. I first looked into it expecting something more uplifting (as the name Celeste suggested something more, I don’t know, celestial) and got a pleasantly unpleasant surprise. Apparently the band has roots in hardcore, but I would […]

I’ve had a hard time coming up with a review for this album. It’s so good–and its sound is immediately familiar, yet hard to pin down in words. Agrimonia takes so much influence from all over the metal map, but rolls it into one seamless, devastating package, that it is not only difficult to pinpoint […]

Year of No Light have been around for a while now. When I listened to 2006’s Nord, I thought it was a competent but unremarkable sludge album. Ausserwelt came out four years later, and their sound had evolved to more than make up for the time elapsed. While that album wasn’t perfect, it contained moments […]