Any band with 20+ years to its name is bound to evolve, but Fear Factory has never gone through massive upgrades to their OS (band members though, different story). Soul of a New Machine was industrial death metal in its molten form, and Demanufacture refined it into cold blue steel. Remanufacture sent it through the crusher and the chop-shop. […]

Euro-Asia (Orwell fans will get the wordplay) piles on the tonal goodness with their latest EP release A View of the Earth.  These Floridian netherworld dwellers gravitate between the Empire State Building tall riffage and trance-y space-outs of heavy/pretty greats such as Hum, Shiner, Floor, Swervedriver and Cave In.  Not quite crushing enough to be […]

Steve Von Till, a key member of seminal sludge and “post-metal” legends Neurosis, has pursued a fruitful solo career in recent years and released a handful of stark blues and country influenced albums. Blues and country influence, in this context, certainly doesn’t refer to wang dang doodle or how he stopped loving her today. The […]

While trying to find a video/sample to put into my reviews of Alda’s Passage, and Crom Dubh‘s Heimweh, I keep seeing YouTube suggestions for songs from a band called Vallendusk. Well, eventually I clicked on one of the songs from the band’s Pest Records 2013 album, Black Clouds Gathering, and I was hooked. And not just […]

Chicago’s Immortal Bird made ripples in the underground when they burst onto the scene with their impressive Akrasia EP in 2013. Led by the ultra talented Rae Amitay and featuring in their ranks guitarist Evan Berry from impressive folk metal titans Wilderun, Immortal Bird return with their eagerly anticipated debut full-length, Empress/Abscess. Aside from featuring […]

If judged on the merit of riffs alone, Texan tarnation masters Funeral Horse would be a holy grail of hard-rock.  The constant shifts from road-rage solos to dusty blues riffs to pavement cracking noise-rock/hardcore to vintage 70s hard rock backed by a walloping rhythm section will keep you guessing and ducking for cover as to […]

Wombbath is  a Swedish death metal band who were kicking it around in the early 90’s but broke up in 1995.  Their lone album, 1993s Internal Caustic Torments was a classic for me and grossly overlooked back in the day.  Had no idea it was remastered a mere 2 years ago and I snagged it recently from […]

Prejudices, they’re a bitch. Whether it is literature, music, food, or people, prejudices never amount to anything good. We all have them though, in some way, shape, or form we all prejudge something. Even as we understand and try our best to avoid them, we eventually fail…and fail is what I did when I first […]

So Vomitory broke up in 2013 after one of the most consistent yet unheralded death metal discographies to ever come out of Sweden. But 3/4 of the band ( drummer Tobias “Tobben” Gustafsson, guitarist Anders Bertilsson, and vocalist/bassist Erik Rundqvist) are back under a rather uncreative new moniker, Cut Up. I’m not sure what you are expecting from a band that’s […]

Grindcore has always been on the fringe of everything current in the metal scene. The first time I heard Napalm Death’s Scum I have to admit I was completely put off. Here were these blasts of noise that were nowhere near long enough to be actual songs, nor could I tell whether the record should […]

I was a mere reviewing infant when Massachusetts’ Warhorse dropped their lone full length album back in 2001. And while digitalmetal.com covered the release, I never got around to hearing it, and many of you might not have also.  Luckily, Southern Lord Recordings is here to assist you and reintroduce you to one of the more revered US […]

I am one for concept albums especially when they revolve around late 1970’s Horror Films and that is exactly what Demon Lung’s A Dracula is. Produced by Billy Anderson (Neurosis, High on Fire) A Dracula has a fantastically heavy and sludgy production.  I was not too familiar with Demon Lung when I choose to do […]

One could argue that after four classic albums (Among the Catacombs of Nephren-Ka, Black Seeds of Vengeance, In Their Darkened Shrines, Annihilation of the Wicked), South Carolina’s Nile could be construed to be running in place for their following 3 albums, culminating in 2012’s At the Gates of Sethu. While unmistakably still a Nile album, production issues plagued […]

While the likes of Fleshgod Apocalypse, Hour of Penance, Logic of Denial and such get the lions share of the attention when it comes to Italian death metal, a couple of lesser known Italian bands have come to my attention of late- namely Inverted and Necrosy. Inverted with their impressive The Age of Harvest and Necrosy […]

Russell Allen’s vocals have always been one of the elements I’ve loved best about Symphony X: he’s powerful and stunning in big choruses, rousing in the verses, and never so goopy or overcooked that my enthusiasm turns to embarrassment (as is the case with a lot of power metal bands, hence my very picky attitude towards […]

For those of you not family with Ambassador Gun started off as a group called A Second from The Surface.  If you get to check out their older material it is worth checking out. Ambassador Gun definitely no rookies to The United States metal community having done a record with Prosthetic Records and also appearing […]

Eschewing the standard tropes of the “bigger, louder, faster, heavier, etc” second album adjectives that most metal bands embrace, Secrets of the Sky have written an album that peaks and wanes with life, character, mood, melody, and dissonance. Pathways is an album through and through with segues that give the listener the feeling of arriving […]

The cover art of In Cauda Venenum features an oil painted skull, or some decrepit face.  You aren’t exactly sure but the artist painted a clearly defined creature to start.  Stark, and ugly, but fine in composition and clear to any viewer.  An important lesson for any artist is to challenge themselves, letting go of […]

So largely, this album , along with Morbid Vomit‘s Return to the Crypts and Cult of Endtime‘s In Charnel Lights,  and Abscession’s, Grave Offerings are responsible for my relative lack of enthusiasm for Entrails‘ Obliteration. And to be fair, Obliteration is still pretty good, but its safe sound along with these other albums really tempered […]

Cattle Decapitation is a group that has definitely earned a reputation for themselves with a career spanning nineteen years and with six full length releases on their belts they have truly knocked the ball out of the park with their 2015 release The Anthropocene Extinction. Conceptually focusing on The Anthropocene Era, Cattle Decapitation has created a forty six minute […]

Sigh. It’s been awhile. This is a band that I was once totally in love with; going all the way back to the release of their 1997 album, Hail Horror Hail. Sigh have always been a completely fearless musical entity; even from their formative, moribund Venom necro-worship on Scorn Defeat, they were already taking chances […]

I’m pretty sure that 2014/15 has been the strongest year for the Swedish Death metal revival movement since the genre reignited back in 2008/09.  And its just not bigger names like Bloodbath, Entrails, Feral, Just Before Dawn, Puteraeon ,Revel in Flesh, Usurpress, Brutally Deceased, Wombbath or dusted of compilations and of ‘lost classics’  like Goddefied, Sorcery and Festerday.  New, fresh, […]

I’ve said it before, I’m saying it now, and ill say it again; I don’t know what the fuck is going on at Mighty Music. Once a bastion for burly European death and black metal, the label is churning out mainstream rock, or just tripe like The Grumpynators, Fried Okra  Band, Franklin Zoo, Bullet Train Blast, See the Sky, Black Book […]

From Luxembourg hail some of the coldest sons of bitches you’ll ever meet.  The band in question is Plaguewielder; a doom paced, blackened affair with some of the most obnoxiously retched vocals I’ve ever heard.  This quartet is a pretty hypothermic affair aimed at leaving your carcass strung up in a meat-locker for future feasting.  […]

So deathcore has been fading for a few years now. Even prior heavy weights Oceano, I Declare War, Impending Doom and Whitechapel barely registered with their respective last releases or bands are simply becoming more tech death metal (Abiotic, Job For a Cowboy). But last year, New Jersey’s Lorna Shore released a solid little EP called Maleficum, […]