A new Witch Vomit offering is almost a holiday ‘round these parts. It wasn’t a question of IF it would be covered, but more of a question of who would be; Myself or Steve K. Surprisingly, he put up no fight. I’m glad for once we didn’t come to blows (not that kind you dirty […]

During the total eclipse of the sun earlier this year, I wasn’t as stupid as most of the population seems to have been by looking at the sun, I admit to taking pictures of it. It was a bit magical, I had a bonfire going, and through no consequence at all I ended up listening […]

Italian Technical Death Metallers Hour of Penance return with their ninth full-length record Devotion. I have been a fan of Hour of Penance since hearing their second full-length record Pageantry for Martyrs. Devotion gets kicked off with “Devotion of Tyranny” which reminds me a lot of their third album The Vile Conception. The guitar work […]

This spring, two US-based, keyboard-heavy, melodic death metal bands will be releasing their second albums respectively. One, Philadelphia’s Malphas with Portal (via M-Theory Audio), and this album from Seattle’s more old-school influenced Veriteras. And it’s not even close to who the winner is as The Dark Horizon is absolutely stunning.  Part of my enjoyment of […]

I have reviewed quite a lot of Pestilence albums on this site, as well as reviewing their various reissues multiple times and over the years I would consider main axe grinder/vocalist, Patrick Mameli, as a friend, with our various interactions.  I respect his musical work and songwriting skills and many of the Pestilence albums I […]

This Finnish power metal band has been around since the 90’s and I have seen their logo and ads for decades, however, I have never heard them until now, with Clear Cold Beyond which is their 14th album – holy smokes!  After listening to their back catalog in order to compare this to their prior […]

4 years ago I reviewed the debut album, Decay from Glasgow’s Necrocracy and it was a rough and ready, solid release of no-frills, burly black metal. And then out of the blue, the band emails me and tells me about their new digital and cassette-only release they are dropping. So apparently the material on Predestiny […]

Fun fact: This is the third intro I’ve written for my review of this album, all on different devices. I wasn’t satisfied, which is probably the story of my life and my exes’. I’m just going to mostly skip that part and go into the first track on Replicant’s new one, called “Acid Mirror.” Sharing […]

The first time I heard Steve Moore was the soundtracks for Mayhem and The Mind’s Eye (2017 and 2016 respectively). Zombi is a collaboration between Moore and A.E. Paterra and I have taken a deep dive into their music since getting the promo for Direct Inject. Since their inception in 2001 they’ve released six studio […]

Remember bands like Nails, All Pigs Must Die, Trap Them and other Southern Lord bands of the mid 00s? That grimy, downturned, feedback laced Swedish death metal-meets hardcore and grind/d-beat sound that Gatecreeper , Fuming Mouth and such expanded on more recently? Well, the UKS Mastiff is here to take you back to that with […]

I love a good mystery. One of the most used introductions “it was a dark and stormy night” always set the mood for some sort of dark mischief. So, today is not dark and stormy, yet I have a mystery on my hands. It concerns this band that El Jefe sent me called Lvme and […]

When it looked like Germany’s Chapel of Disease was calling it a day a few years after their 2018, third album – the very wordy,   …and As We Have Seen the Storm, We Have Embraced the Eye my buddy Graham (Deepsend Records) and I commiserated that this was not fun news.  I have followed the […]

The Netherlands Houwitser returns with their sixth album Sentinel Beast. If you are not familiar with Houwitser it is a project of former Sinister vocalist Mike Van Mastrigt. I was excited to hear that these guys were still active. If you have not, check out Mike’s other side band Neocaesar if you are a fan […]

So album number 14 (or 15, depending on how you view 2011s Evinta) from England’s long-running Godfathers of Doom sees the band continue down the path of the last album, 2020s The Ghost of Orion, and the subsequent Macabre Cabaret EP both releases I was a bit ambivalent on. Since the band’s 1999 transitional effort […]

Cleveland is a death metal town. I’m much closer to Pittsburgh but do make the journey to Cleveland somewhat regularly. My friend who books shows in Pittsburgh told me about a show he was considering but was on the fence. It happens to be my favorite band from this old-school death metal revival of which […]

Looking back to 1992. I was living in England at the time due to my dad being stationed there with the Air Force. I spent many hours in the base record store, I discovered so many bands while living over there and Atrophy was one of them. It was a track on a compilation called […]

Norway’s Deception returns with their second full-length album Daenacteh. I have been a fan of Deception since their last record The Mire (2019). I was also pleased earlier in the year to find out that their guitarist vocalist Sindre Wathne Johnsen is now the new vocalist for Blood Red Throne. For those not familiar with […]

In 2022 UK deathcore/slam titans  Ingested dropped Ashes Lie Still, a more experimental and tempered album that showed the band’s more introspective side as frontman Jason Evans dealt with the loss of his father. The band also clearly saw some of the success Whitechapel had with their duo of The Valley and Kin, as more […]

To coincide with their current US tour, pirate rockers Alestorm have dropped a 5 song EP following up 2022s excellent Seventh Rum of a Seventh Rum album. You know exactly what you are getting with Alestorm at this point in their prolifically fun discography while and that does not change with the short little EP, […]

Well, I used a flaming tree limb as an air guitar for the first time today (I should mention that I was pretending it was driftwood from some sunken wreck) so… that’s something new. But I couldn’t help it, something was possessing me and moving me forward to this lava black beach. Yeah, that’s right, […]

Oh, Aborted. We share a little in common. When my parents talk about me, Aborted is brought up. It’s usually at the end of a sentence beginning with “you should have been,” but whatever. As for other things we have in common, there aren’t any. Their new album Vault of Horrors is indeed a new […]

Shattered Earth Records is a relatively new label with ties to the excellent Dragoncorpse and has awesome bands like Hanging the Nihilist, Spitpool, Obscure Mantra, Loathsome and The Pelennor Field Tragedgy (yes, epic Tolkien-themed deathcore) on their roster. So when they sent me the new release from Memento Mori, I had to check it out….eventually […]

In Demonology, Malphas is a demonic grand president of hell and is second in command to Satan. He commands 40 legions of demons and he appears as a crow to any summoners. It’s also a melodic death metal band from Philadelphia that uses its demonic namesake as the basis for all its lyrics, songs, and […]

Hideous Divinity is back with their fifth full-length album, Unextinct.  The band opted to go the longest length of time in their career without ever releasing an album, as Simulacrum was released a year prior to COVID.  The band was patient not to release a COVID album because they knew there would be no touring […]

I reviewed Exhorder’s comeback album, Mourn the Southern Skies, in 2019 on TOTD.  While I enjoyed the album, and as a comeback album it was good, but still left some meat on the bone, so to speak.  There were aggressive songs, however, I felt, much of the album was marred by sludgy slow songs, that […]