*Rant mode ON* You know, I love thrash, and when this whole thrash resurgence came about, I was pretty damn excited. But truth be told, I’m flat out tired of it now. Why? Because the labels won’t stop signing every last one of them they find. Every label has to have one in order to […]
Wow – talk about being knocked on your ass! Carving Out the Eyes of God (from here on will be Carving), the fourth long player from New Orleans’ Goatwhore is a monster of an album, and it was totally unexpected for me. My first exposure to them was about five years ago when I saw […]
Anyone who wrote off Nightrage after their last album, A New Disease is Born, would do good to give them another shot. Wearing a Martyr’s Crown sees them once again in top form on par with Descent Into Chaos or even Sweet Vengeance. For starters, the Tomas Lindberg replacement vocalist Jimmie Strimmel is gone, and […]
Up until now, I was only familiar with Hacride by name, but had heard much praise. After spinning Lazarus, the French bands third full length, I can see why – these cats have a pretty unique sound that I can only attempt to compare to a few others. There are all kinds of sounds and […]
Yeah I know – what a silly band name. A name like that makes me want to skip right over an album, but as I’ve learned in the past, a name does not necessarily make the band. A perfect example of this is Rumpelstiltskin Grinder. Anyway, here we have the debut full length, Existenzminimum (an […]
Curiosity got the best of me when I signed up for this one, the third full length from The Legion. Their drummer, Emil Dragutinovic, is also in Devian (and once in Marduk), a band who I’ve had my eye on the past couple years. All I really knew of them is that they were more […]
Now this is some excellent death metal right here. Spanning many sounds and variations of death metal, Germany’s Lay Down Rotten bring a well balanced and never tiring extreme metal pallet. Head-banging, groove based riffing and superb, emotive melodic leads punctuate this disc in an immediately memorable fashion. A lot of this stuff brings a […]
Ugh. I hate when I’m let down by an album I’ve been anticipating. Coming into Attitude, I was curious to see where Susperia would take their catchy and melodic death/thrash – back towards the phenomenal Unlimited from 2004, or continue down the path set by their last, 2007’s Cut From Stone, which felt rather lackluster […]
Before hearing What Horrors Await, I was only vaguely familiar with Jungle Rot. I knew they had been around for awhile and had heard bits and pieces of their stuff, enough to know they had a very groove based, old school death metal sound, so I pretty much knew what to expect and that’s exactly […]
Well whadya know? Another ultra talented tech-ish band from Canada – Montreal to be exact. When I received this promo, Derelict was still an unsigned band, but was recently signed to Year of the Sun. The packaging the band sent the CD in is immediately impressive, giving the notion that this is a band that […]
Cryogen’s last release, This Nightmare EP, was one of the first I reviewed for this site, back when it was still Digital Metal. In the two years since, not much has changed in the camp musically – they still play a slightly Americanized brand of melodic death metal, drawing influence from In Flames and the […]
You’ll have to excuse me in advance, because this is gonna be less a review and more the journalistic equivalent of a blowjob. Seriously, this really is that good. This is retro Thrash done right, peppered with a gnarly Black Metal edge. It’s nasty, it’s mean, it’s raw – it’s about as raw as Mike […]
Over the past couple years, Cruz Del Sur has done a good job of establishing themselves as a top flight powerhouse of power and traditional heavy metal with the likes of Pharaoh, Slough Feg, Icarus Witch, and now with the addition of Pennsylvania’s Crown the Lost, their run of dominance in the genre(s) continues. Now, […]
Here’s another album I was anticipating, but ultimately found boring. I remember buying their debut, Inside the Machine and thinking they had some potential, but after four or five spins, I shelved it and eventually sold it. So now, two years later we have Dead Harvest, and nothing more than another serving of potential unrealized. […]
I really wanted to like this, and at first I did, or at least thought I did. It’s not that The Cancer Empire is a bad album, but just kinda plain and rather safe. These types of reviews are always the hardest to write – not bad but not particularly good, these middle of the […]
Friday, April 17th @ House of Blues, Chicago, IL It took us nearly 8 hours to get to Chicago with a couple stops, and a couple more stops to take pics of some really ridiculous things you see in the rural midwest areas. Epicurean was already playing as we walked in, and we managed to […]
Now this – this is what I’m talking about. Metal Blade got it right with Lazarus A.D. More than just another retro thrash band, these gents from Wisconsin aren’t afraid to modernize their ripping thrash sound with a heaping dose of groove, seething vocals and a top notch production. Taking more than a couple cues […]
Listenable Records have scored big with Germany’s Centaurus-A, as their debut LP Side Effects Expected is a tour de force of modern tech death. Much like the recent Obscura release, Centaurus-A are well versed in how to wrap all their impressive tech wizardry into actual songs that are simultaneously heavy, thrashy, melodic, memorable and mind […]
Mastodon are one of the most lauded bands in modern metal, but at the same time, one of the most hated by “elitists” with an agenda against “mallcore” (such a stupid descriptor I might add). I still have no idea how music of such a progressive nature can be considered “mallcore”, or meant for mass […]
Canada never ceases to amaze me with their wealth of technically proficient extreme metal acts. Bands like Into Eternity, Strapping Young Lad, Divinity and Quo Vadis have blown my mind time and time again. Once again, I’ve come across another of such bands, this time being the oddly and utterly atrociously named Deeply Confused, a […]
Nearly 4 years is much too long for a follow up to such a bad ass album, that being Rumpelstiltskin Grinder’s (RG) 2005 opus Buried in the Front Yard, an album that knocked me on my ass from the word go. I remember reading a review of it and thinking “this sounds like my kind […]
Here’s another one I’ve been putting off for some time. Each time I put it on, I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around it, and had to shut it off. But as of late, I’ve been digging on a little more oddball, left of center and/or progressive stuff from my norm, and Frozen Circus […]
I avoided this one for awhile, because well, truth be told I haven’t really dug on any new metalcore in quite some time, and all the albums I actually wanted to check out, with expectations and everything, failed me. So here we have this fresh band from the UK, The Eyes of a Traitor (TEOAT […]
Coming from Phoenix, Arizona we have Fracture Point with their independently released debut full-length, Inherit the Downfall. A four piece, Fracture Point blend elements of thrash, groove and semi-technical playing in a style that is distinctly American, drawing comparison to Lamb of God, Pantera and Meshuggah. What you won’t find on Inherit the Downfall is […]
Before starting this review proper, I have a small rant to get off my chest: what the fuck is up with all the delayed North American release dates? This album was released in Europe way back in October, and here we are in February finally getting it in the US. There are several albums I […]