Atlanta, Georgia residents Royal Thunder made a strong statement with their self-titled EP in 2010; blending bluesy, southern-tinged rock ‘n’ roll with sturdy doom foundations.  But perhaps their biggest drawcardwas the commanding presence of singer and bassist Miny Parsonz;a front-woman who could belt the tunes out with full-blooded urgency, or pull back into soulful restraint […]

Now this is just filthy.  And I don’t mean any kind of filthy, I mean FILTHY.  This is like the floor at the favorite hole in the wall bar where you’ve seen way too many metal shows.  But it’s a glorious filth that you won’t want to wash off any time soon.  Finland’s Hooded Menace […]

The fact that I was born in 1984 means that I have missed out on a lot of metal history. Sure, it has been documented in the form of records and concert footage, but it’s not the same as actually being at a specific event, such as the early genesis of death metal with early […]

16 are back with the follow-up to their excellent reunion album Bridges to Burn. It’s a decent successor, if a little disappointing. Good enough on its own, Deep Cuts From Dark Clouds isn’t as memorable as their last outing and doesn’t measure up to the band’s earlier work. It’s more aggressive, more direct in its […]

I gotta hand it to Relapse – Results is one hell of a cut-throat release in terms of deathgrind songwriting. It’s experimental, without departing from the outlines of what defines this genre as the game-changer of extreme metal throughout the ages; still, it dares go into whatever direction it damned well sees fit, and I’ve […]

So after a couple of line up juggling, transitional post Destroy the Opposition albums in Stop at Nothing and War of Attrition,  American stalwarts Dying Fetus trimmed down to a three piece for 2009s Descend into Depravity with impressive results. And now finally, John Gallagher has put together two album with the same line up […]

There she stands in the darkness, flecks of her golden hair illuminated by candle flicker and lightning flash. The silhouette of a white nightgown spills to her bare feet on the wooden floor. A gold crucifix spins lightly from the beaded chain around her neck, clinking softly. The knife she clutches glints maliciously. You see […]

After six long years, Spawn of Possession are back to toss their hat into the tech-death ring with their third full-length – Incurso. The band has gone through a lineup change since the last album, with drummer Dennis Rondum trading in his sticks for a microphone, and Obscura’s Christian Munzner taking over on guitars. Right […]

So the band Liberteer came to my attention after reviewing the recent Beaten to Death album, a grindcore album that was grindcore with a difference, and so is the debut album from Liberteer. Comprised of Matt Widener, the grindcore lineage is certainly here considering Widener’s involvement in the likes of Cretin, Citizen, Exhumed and The […]

It’s tough to be a metal band in 2012. Not only does one have to contend with piracy, a shrinking music industry, and a crowded pond filled with the scum of other metal bands, but one has to be able to stand out musically. Some bands take the safe route and pay tribute to their […]

When an album cover depicts four long haired zombies devouring the flesh of the dead from the grave, I expect it to be a very unrelenting death metal album. Dismemberment, mutilation, disembowelment and any other descriptor for human evisceration are what I expect to drive the music and lyrics. Exhumed delivers the splattered gore on […]

Relapse has reissued some pretty good stuff over the last couple of years, namely the Death reissues as well as General Surgery, Convulse and Nirvana 2002, but along with a couple of the recent Dying Fetus reissues, this one is a bit of head scratcher. For some reason Relapse Records has decided to dust off and […]

Brutal Truth returned from their extended hiatus in 2009 with Evolution Through Revolution, an angular, violent extension of the sound they developed on 1997’s Sounds of the Animal Kingdom. End Time sees the band unleash a blistering whirlwind of grinding fury, continuing the developments of Evolution with a slightly meatier production and a noisier and […]

I’ve been a big Mastodon fan since Remission, but even I have to admit that I was surprised to see Crack the Skye named Time magazine’s #3 album of 2009. Of course, it was a terrific release, full of hypnotic, proggy epics and three of my favorite minutes of metal that year (all packed into […]

It makes sense that Agoraphobic Nosebleed did a split with Despise You. The band has worn proudly on their sleeve their love for grinding power-violence through the shirts they wear, songs they’ve covered, and singer Jay Randall’s very own free record label, Grindcore Karaoke. But they didn’t just have a flavor-of-the-month powerviolence band to do […]

Metalheads could and will argue about which Death album is the band’s best effort, although to no avail, because arguments could be made for all of them (I’m kinda partial to Spiritual Healing). However, I’m not sure many people would argue that the lineup on 1991’s Human was the best one of  Chuck Schuldiner’s rotating […]

Opening with a ripping guitar solo that hits with the force of an out of control machine gun. Instantly the glass shatters from the window that encases your lavishing frame. 20 seconds in and the murderous intentions seep through and kill everything in the blink of an eye. How is this done? Powerviolence! Weekend Nachos […]

For you whippersnappers out there, the current  incarnation of General Surgery―the one that reformed in 2003 and has released  two full-length albums since―is a far cry from what the band was in 1991 when they unleashed their seven song debut EP Necrology. One of the early super groups, culling members of the then burgeoning Stockholm Death metal […]

Talk about a breath of fresh air. With so much deathcore aping, tech-metal trying to out-tech itself and post-ironic hipster dabbles in the world of heaviness, it’s relief to accidentally come across a record in 2011 that is visceral and extreme without any novelty kitsch. The adventitious record I’m referring to is The Oculus from […]

If you like electronic music, particularly proggy synth music, and especially synth-based horror and sci-fi soundtracks from the late ’70s and early ’80s, then you’ll love Zombi. Simple as that. Cosmos, the Pittsburgh-based duo’s 2004 debut, was heavily influenced by Goblin (Dawn of the Dead, Buio Omega, Suspiria) and Italian giallo horror soundtracks in general. […]

Horseback is a unique musical entity that challenges the definition and boundaries of the epithet “band”. Of course this notion isn’t entirely new. Many musical outlets exist that seem to morph in and out of “projects” or “collaborations” and so on without being decidedly active or touring regularly. And when the style of musical output […]

The human brain excels at patterns. It does this all day long, interpreting and rendering an endless flood of sensory signals into a cohesive and constant presentation of reality. A large part of this process involves prediction, based on past experience and feedback, so that we have a natural sense of the next step in […]

The story of the Grotesque Impalement EP is an interesting one, as it was actually self-released (on the band’s own Blunt Force Records) in 1999 as a “holdover” album between Killing on Adrenaline and Destroy the Opposition. Relapse has now reissued the EP with a new package, a remastering job, liner notes from Jason Netherton, […]

It wasn’t until 2000’s Destroy the Opposition that I discovered Dying Fetus, who were being touted as the heirs apparent to the then-on-hiatus Suffocation. Based on Destroy the Opposition and Killing on Adrenaline, which I picked  up shortly after hearing Destroy the Opposition, those claims were certainly founded at the time. But for those that […]

It’s hard to believe this album was originally released in 1996 on Pulverizer Records. Fifteen years ago? Really? What’s so surprising is what an obvious influence Dying Fetus—and albums like Purification through Violence—has been on the brutal death end of the spectrum, particularly the sub-genre known as slam metal. Check out the first break into […]