Like Hollow Corp’s recent The Cloister of Radiance album, the third album from Denmark’s The Psyke Project was originally released in Europe last year and now has a stateside distribution. Also like Hollow Corp, The Psyke Project mix harsh, caustic metal with a few injections of post rock, and gain the results, while solid are […]

While I enjoyed Misery Signal’s recent Controller effort, I have to admit the debut from this Lancaster, PA act stole some of that album’s thunder by delivering a very similar and almost as competent delivery of melodic, layered and emotional metalcore. While bands like It Prevails, Rosesdead and more recently November 5, 1955 have tried […]

There’s nothing really wrong with the debut from this Philadelphia deathcore act, as their debut is a competent delivery of now familiar genre traits; dual vocals, choppy squealing thrashing, some techy noodling and a plethora of breakdowns. However, on the whole, it really sorta bored me and I found my self reaching for After the […]

Now this band is really rolling. After the misfire of their stodgy Lifeforce debut ‘Murder Within the Means of Existence,’ Burning Skies cut the fat, and unleashed the absolute bestial Desolation, in 2006. This, their third release for Lifeforce is even better, showing growth in a number of key areas that needed to be developed […]

MISERATION is the latest effort from SCAR SYMMETRY Vocalist Christian Älvestam and Jani Stefanovic (Essence of Sorrow, Divinefire), who together perform a fast, brutal and aggressive melodic style of metal, what their homeland Sweden is best known for. LIFEFORCE RECORDS is proud to give the band’s critically acclaimed debut album Your Demons, Their Angels; a […]

While The Crossfire is Fall of Serenity’s fourth full length album, they are not the same band that recorded 2001’s Dead Man’s Requiem. Even since their last album, Bloodred Salvation, bass player John Gahlert has taken over vocal duties, guitarist Alex Fischer moved over to bass and Ferdinand Rewicki joined the group filling the void […]

Completely unfamiliar with the band coming in, I was advised before doing this review to do a little research regarding France’s Destinity, as it seems they’ve gone through some sort of direction change since their inception in the mid 90’s. After digging around at their website and Myspace, as well as their page at metal-archives.com, […]

It’s a good thing I got the recent Day Without Dawn album around the same time I got the debut release from this Italian post rock band, because now I have something to compare At The Soundawn to; shimmering, delicate, acoustic heavy, artistic post rock. While more of a long EP (7 songs) than a […]

Ugh. I just hate it when good or decent music is ruined with below average vocals. Example: this new Hell Within disc Shadows of Vanity. Musically, it’s accessible modern thrash with some melody, ala Sanctity or recent Trivium. Vocally, it’s the standard harsh/clean trade off sound of metalcore, courtesy of one Matt McChesney, who most […]

As their album titles have become less wordy, Ohio noisemongers Harlots have become increasingly more experimental in their discordance. Though still steeped in technical, angular and caustic hardcore a la Ion Dissonance,Animosity, Engineer, Architect (and most of the Black Market Activities roster) and their ilk, Harlots have now successfully managed to weave in some moments […]

Well here’s a release that I was not sure I should review, considering this is a metal site, but I also remember that a lot of metal fans are Clann Zu fans, so this solo project from Clann Zu’s Irish half, Declan De Barra, might be of interest. Plus it’s technically on a metal label, […]

While far from the worst in the recent slew of gimmick laden tech grind death core, Germany’s War From A Harlot’s Mouth is still a fairly run of the mill foray into screaming growling, breakdown heavy pseudo grindcore/death metal played by angry kids with guitars and a love for silly song names. Despite injecting some […]

Ever wonder what it would sound like if the collective heads of Fugazi, Electric Wizard & Rush were nailed together whilst the bands tried frantically to tear apart from each other? No, neither have I. But lucky for us, thanks to Light Pupil Dilate, we don’t have to! Snake Wine delivers a solid slab of […]

So this spring sees two fairly important melodic death records released from two once ‘rising’; bands; Omnium Gatherum on a new label, with a new vocalist looking to rebound from the lackluster Years In Waste after a genre defining debut, Spirits and August Light, and super group of sorts Nightrage. Arguably Nightrage lost their ‘supergroup’ […]

As hard as Lifeforce is plugging this as Entombed meets Dissection meets Mastodon meets High On Fire, I’m only buying a quarter of their hype; the Swedish death metal quarter. Withered, for all intents, purposes, regardless of origin (Georgia-hence the Mastodon plugs), name dropping and forced label based pigeon holing, stand toe to toe with […]

Germany’s Fear My Thoughts complete they shift from rumbling metalcore to melodic death metal that was hinted at on last years ambitious The Great Collapse, and while Hell Sweet Hell is a solid album, it just doesn’t leap out at me and I still prefer the band’s more extroverted stylings of V.I.T.R.I.O.L. That being said, […]

Edge of Sanity. Yup, that’s the first band that popped into my head when the opening chords of the tile track rumbled from the speakers. Not the ambient experimental metalcore outfit who blew me away with V.I.T.R.I.O.L, and while a drastic style change such as this might usually disappoint me, Fear My Thoughts actually pull […]

I’m pretty sure the same virus that infected Gothenburg in the mid-’90s has mutated an infected musicians on the East Coast. Some of the music comes from that area is just phenomenal, and for me at the top of the rapidly growing pack are newcomers Beyond The Sixth Seal.BTSS started as a thrash band in […]

As metalcore shape-shifts every month, the borders of the genre continually expand, absorbing death and thrash metal, jazz, fusion, hardcore and every other music genre it decides to take on. Death metal in sound and hardcore in attitude, Germany’s Heaven Shall Burn are one such metalcore outfit, whose sound is more reflective of Amon Amarth’s […]

t’s no secret to most of you that the genre of hardcore has morphed its shape and sound in recent years. In fact, I think it’s pretty safe to say that most of the modern-day warriors that our ears are being exposed to nowadays share little camaraderie with the punk rock icons that most bands […]