Posts Tagged ‘Relapse Records’

Death – Scream Bloody Gore (Reissue)

In 1987 Death firmly put the stamp of the death metal genre on the map with the release of their debut Scream Bloody Gore album.  I received it on vinyl as a birthday gift that year and it is an album all us old bastards have memorized front to back.   Once again Relapse Records […]

Gatecreeper – Sonorian Depravation

Unless You live under a rock, and this is the first time you have ever visited this site or another heavy metal/extreme metal webzine, I’m going to assume you have heard of Arizona’s Gatecreeper, Relapse Records latest heavily hyped darlings. Partly because this is the first new band playing old school death metal Relapse has pushed in a while (let’s […]

16 – The Lifespan of a Moth

Man, there is just no replacing the classic sludge bands.  Bands like Grief, Negative Reaction, Cavity, Eyehategod, Buzzov*en, Crowbar, Acid Bath, Cable, Green Machine, Noothgrush Kilara, Iron Monkey, Sour Vein, etc. still resonate with me just like they did in the 90s when I first got into all of them; each one had a unique, […]

Gruesome – Dimensions of Horror EP

With last year’s Savage Land, Exhumed main main Matt Harvey and basically his Chuck Schuldiner cover band Gruesome, delivered arguably the apex early Death worship album. But at the end of my review, I wondered how the band would follow Savage Land up. Would they still basically cover Death’s first 3 albums or would they […]

Wrong – Wrong

Let’s just suppose that, in 1994 or so, Helmet wrote some songs.  Also they had a time machine. They used it to travel a few years further back and coerce the Melvins to write a couple more songs for them. Then they screamed forward to last year and forced Converge to show them how to […]

Graves at Sea – The Curse That Is

Portland, Oregon’s Graves at Sea and I go way, way back.  I reviewed their Documents of Grief outing before it was an official press; at the time just a handmade CD-R that the fellas put together on the fly.  Directly after its release I had the distinct honor of interviewing the band (Nate and Nick) […]

Opprobrium – Serpent Temptation (Reissue)

Starting out in the late 80’s Francis Howard (Guitars) and his brother, Moyses (Drums), along with bass/vocalist Scot Latour would put together one of the most under-appreciated death/thrash bands, Incubus.  Hailing from Louisiana, Incubus would go on to put out the outstanding 1988 Serpent Temptation, debut album. They bested that 2 years later with Beyond the […]

Obscura – Akróasis

Every few years a album comes along that changes the game in tech death. Going back to this band’s namesake with Gorgut’s Obscura, Death’s seminal latter output, Origin, Atheist, Cynic, Necrophagist, Theory In Practice’s Colonizing the Sun, the Canadian scene, Gorod and others. And here is another one, in Obscura’s fourth effort Akróasis. These Germans are far from new comers  and certainly […]

Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Arc EP

As a longtime fan of these digitized, Maryland filth-grinders, I’m used to Agoraphobic Nosebleed slowing down with big, tumbling dirge riffs and back breaking weight.  They’ve showcased the tactic as early as The Poacher Diaries (split with Converge) and even back in the Honky Reduction days Scott Hull had a knack for busting his knuckles […]

Primitive Man – Home Is Where The Hatred Is EP

Primitive Man’s latest ep is an oppressive, aggressive slab o’ sludge…and a bit of grind…fine, slip in some crust parts too.  It’s an anthropomorphic equivalent to the imposing brutalist style housing project high rise that populate the part of town ,as whispered of by parents, “you don’t want your car to breakdown in”.  Zooming in […]

Fuck the Facts – Desire Will Rot

Fuck the Facts is, right off the bat, just the best band name ever. The end. Musically, the band dwells in a grindcore geography, but is not of a grindcore geography. They are more akin to Today is the Day than Pig Destroyer or Napalm Death, and the point of each song is not to […]

Tau Cross – Tau Cross

This was one of my most anticipated albums in some time; a supergroup comprised of Amebix’s Rob Miller, Michel Langevin (Away) from Voivod, Jon Misery from crust punk stawarts Misery, and Andy Lefton, from the devastatingly crushing War//Plague. I don’t know what I expected that to sound like, given how wonderfully eclectic Ambebix and Voivod […]

Valkyrie – Shadows

Virginian, dual axe demons Valkyrie are back with this phenom of an album, their 3rd full-length to date and first for Relapse.  I make no bones or excuses about loving these guys to death.  I’ve seen them live thrice and they deliver more signed n’ sealed explosives than the Unabomber did in his heyday.  Guitar […]

Skinless – Only the Ruthless Remain

I don’t have much patience with geeker-provenance or hero worship. I was pleased as punch to hear Carcass and Godflesh put out fantastic, true to form records after being away for a while, but for the most part I agree with Death Grips: “Fuck where you’re from, fuck where you’re going, it’s all about where […]

Maruta – Remain Dystopian

Grind is a specific kind of metal that describes, band by band, a single aspect of being, more so than any other kind of metal – or music. The bands that make grind tend to live for that aspect, create for it. Maruta is about tension; sailing riffs on the edge of the world and […]

Gruesome – Savage Land

So I’m sure by now all of you know about Gruesome, the classic Death homage act fronted by Matt Harvey of Exhumed and joined by members of Possessed, Malevolent Creation and Derketa. What you don’t know, if you have not heard the album by now, is exactly how fucking spot on Savage Land is in it’s recreation […]

Abysmal Dawn – Obsolescence

In 2012, I covered the Slaughter on the Water III festival aboard the USS Hornet in San Francisco Bay. Yes, a death metal festival on an aircraft carrier. Actually, make that inside the hangar of an aircraft carrier, and you’d better believe that shit was loud. I got tinnitus in my balls. The day was a blur […]

Obituary – Inked In Blood

So here is the result of a $60,000 Kickstarter campaign: Some killer old-school death metal Andreas Marschall artwork, a killer production, and a killer Obituary album. Pity that money could not have been used to fix John Tardy’s ragged vocal cords… After these death metal legends quickly churned out three albums after reuniting in 2005 for […]

Myrkur – Myrkur EP

As expected from the fickle metal community there has been both a lot of hype and hate towards the debut release from this one woman black metal project from Denmark. From the elitist ‘no women in black metal’ to ‘Deafheaven suck’ crowd and those that think this is the future of black metal. And as is normal, the […]

Mortals – Cursed to See the Future

I guess, based by the number of bands playing the style currently loaded onto my Ipod (Nux Vomica, Stheno, Tombs, Plebian Grandstand, Direwolves, Young and in the Way, Wolvehammer, Black Monolith, Hexis, Protestant, Black Anvil to name a few) blackened crust/sludge/stuff, is the new black. However, what makes Brooklyn’s Mortals stand out (other than the high […]

Tombs – Savage Gold

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 […]

OBITUARY and Relapse Records Join Forces For New Album

    Death metal legends OBITUARY has partnered up with Relapse Records to release the band’s highly anticipated new album. One of the most influential and important death metal bands of all time, OBITUARY have completed recording their highly anticipated 9th studio album and first full-length in over five years. Self-recorded this April by the […]

Interview with Pyrrhon

Back in 2011, New York’s Pyrrhon released their debut album, An Excellent Servant But A Terrible Master on Selfmadegod Records. It was a noisy discordant death metal/grindcore record, but more importantly it featured a good friend and former co scribe from my metalreview.com days, Doug Moore. I had every intention of reviewing the album and also interviewing Doug for this site, but alas I never followed through. A full 3 years later and look at Pyrrhon now! All signed to Relapse Records and shit and releasing one of 2014’s early stellar releases on The Mother Of Virtues.

Nux Vomica – Nux Vomica

Good  things come in small packages. That’s a tried and true homily that has worked it’s way into our collective lexicon since… forever. Why am I quoting homilies in a Metal review? Because Nux Vomica have created a luxurious sounds cape of an album in just three songs, so small packages, indeed. This is a […]

Pyrrhon – The Mother of Virtues

First off, congrats to Doug Moore, vocalist for Pyrrhon and former co-scribe at metalreview.com for getting a deal with the mighty Relapse Records, and second, apologies to Doug for not getting around to reviewing the band’s solid debut album, An Excellent Servant But a Terrible Master, released on Selfmadegod Records back in 2011. Now, on to […]