Generally speaking, average and/or mediocre albums can be quite the proverbial bitch when it comes to reviewing. Much like a dining experience that is merely decent and all around adequate, how does one go about recommending something that is just basically sufficient? Seriously, how many times have we either told someone not to go to […]

Back in 2013,  Germany’s Sulphur Aeon made quite a splash in the death metal genre with their churning Lovecraftian based debut album, Swallowed By the Ocean’s Tide, then followed it up with the more miasmal, Gateway to the Antisphere is 2015, an album that had lofty expectations but still grew on me. Both albums made my year-end […]

First off- Love that cover- I want that on a giant print or t-shirt. Second, Valdur has quickly released their 6th album, barely a year after their last effort, Divine Cessation, came out. How’s that for production? Third, the band appears to have swung the pendulum ever so slightly back towards their black metal roots from the pure, noisy […]

For the last 7 years, New York’s Torturous Inception have been slinging their brand of brutal tech-slam death metal. I’ve heard smatterings of their 2013 debut, The Parable of Scorched Earth, but do not own it. It’s a good intro to their sound. 2017 began the partnership with the band and Amputated Vein Records when […]

So imagine  Mastodon got heavier instead of more progressive, added some Crowbar heft to a stoner metal backbone and were suddenly from Australia and you’d get Sydney’s Sumeru and their raucous second album, Summon Destroyer. After the intro, “Inanis Kultus” the band dive in to “The Temple”, and it’s a bit of a soft opening for the album as […]

Coming to proper metal age, i.e. my teenage years, during death metal’s initial ’90’s explosion not only introduced me to what would become some of the greatest music on the planet, but it also introduced me and many like-minded individuals to the fantastically macabre offerings of H.P. Lovecraft. Considering that damn near every band at […]

On Weak Aside’s last album, The Next Offensive, I had to go after the band’s lackluster moniker as the everything was else was so damn solid. This time, the German warmongers are just as good as before, so I’ll go after that eyesore of an album cover…. I digress, Forward Into Darkness continues the band’s confident and […]

In what has already been an unbelievably busy year for technical, brutal death metal, it has been almost impossible to keep up.  With so many bigger releases this year like: Hate Eternal, Morbid Angel, Deicide, Aborted, and Monstrosity ( Just to name a few).  It would be quite easy to miss out a lot of […]

A staple and standout in the tech death metal scene since 2005s Neurotripsicks, France’s Gorod have delivered 5 albums of superb technical, yet playful and catchy death metal. And I’ll admit that I was a little concerned about the band switching to their own label, Overpowered Records, for album number 6, as this might indicate […]

Swiss djent/progressive deathcore act Mycelia are new to me, even with 4 albums under their belt, but their quirky take on staggering Meshuggah ish heft and polyrhythmic density has me impressed. And by quirky I don’t mean annoying Arsonists Get all the Girls synth injections or dance beats, but a love of classic movies and jazz mixing with the expected stuttering, […]

Long Island’s Pyrexia return with their 5th long player and with a host of new cast members how can CEO, Owner, Manager, Founding member, guitarist, Chris Basile keep it together, you ask? Well the bastid does and I’ve known Mr. Basile for quite a long time, but he is a riff machine. Let’s bring in […]

When you deliver an debut album that arguably reinvigorated melodic death metal in 2004s A Celebration Guilt, expectations tend to pile on and pile up, and despite a Children of Bodom like trajectory, founder and brainchild James Malone has largely responded well with subsequent albums, maybe with the exception of 2010s more rock based Starve for the […]

It is no secret my love of the releases of Everlasting Spew Records knows no bounds.  They continue to put out incredible release after incredible release.  This might be one of their best ones of the year. International Super group Serocs puts on a literal clinic with their 2018 release The Phobos/Deimos Suite.  Where to […]

Full disclosure- I’ve completely lost interest in Between the Buried and Me. Starting with The Great Misdirect, I just haven’t got into the material and I’m less thrilled with each release. I own the Parallax duo and  Coma Ecliptic , but frankly I have net even given them a full listen and I don’t even own […]

The death metal scene was abuzz when Paradise Lost‘s Nick Holmes was announced as the new vocalist for Swedish Death metal super group Bloodbath.. The resultant album, The Grand Morbid Funeral was solid, but certainly nothing compared to the band’s first two Akerfeldt and Peter Tagtgren fronted, classic releases. Well, Holmes is back, and is […]

The debut EP from Milwaukee’s Prezir , Contempt, was a solid black/death metal assault, but I’d expect no less from a project that includes Rory Heikkila from Shroud of Despondency on guitar ,vocalist Luka Đorđević from epic Tolkien death metal act  Khazaddum, and has since added Milwaukee scene veteran Jerry Hauppa from Concentric, Northless and Ara on bass. And on the band’s full length debut, […]

Earlier this year, I reviewed a group called Inexorum which in my opinion is one of the best u.s melodic black metal albums of the year.  The songwriting and production is absolutely outstanding and if you have not checked them out.  Please do.  Now, on to Antiverse.  Antiverse features two members of Inexorum, Carl Skildum […]

After locking into their sound on 2005’s I. Monarch, Erik Rutan and Hate Eternal have delivered 4 damn fine albums of American death metal that’s one of the more solid discographies of the last decade or so. And with the addition of drummer Hannes Grossman (Alkaloid, ex Necrophagist) on drums to Rutan and JJ Hrubovcak (on his […]

Absolutely sick little sludgy, abrasive split release here from a pair of bands that feature some under the radar heavy rock vets from both sides of the pond.  A good split EP should introduce you to two great bands that you might not know a whole helluva a lot about but after a few plays […]

Master is a bit of an unusual act. The band, or more specifically, bassist/vocalist and founding member, Paul Speckmann, has been involved in the metal scene for 35 years now and arguably, he is credited among other notable metal alumni such as Death‘s Chuck Schuldiner, Possessed, and Necrophagia‘s Killjoy with helping create death metal itself. […]

Every once and a while a label puts out a release that is contrary to the majority of their prior releases.  Such is the case with Memento Mori’s 2018 release of Grenoble France’s Barus full length debut Drowned.  For one, these guys are from the same hometown as Andre the Giant. Number two, when a […]

Behemoth – noun: a huge or monstrous creature, something enormous; especially a big and powerful organization.  The definition of that word is also apt for the band Behemoth, who are arguably the best blackened death metal band on the planet.  Or one of the best metal bands period.  I can say for me personally, they’re […]

IT’S MORPHIN’ TIME! Okay, I won’t lie to you guys. I didn’t actually know the catch phrase to the once longtime running children’s show without having to look it up. In all honesty, I’ve never seen an episode of the original program or its spinoffs as I am considered an old fart to many youngsters, […]

Hang on, let me grab my Comastose Music and Italian brutal death metal review template and paste in here…. [Insert brutal album name here] is the debut album from  [insert band name here], hailing from [Italy], featuring current and former members of  [insert other brutal death bands from Italy here] and deliver exactly what you’d […]

Ho hum… another couple years, and another killer album from none other than the almighty Aborted.  I mean it almost seems like these Belgians have been kicking ass for so long, you almost hope the metal world doesn’t start to take them for granted.  On the 20th year of this band’s existence, they’ve dropped their […]