Dissident Clone’s State of Dysphoria EP makes for an entertaining albeit quick listen at a combined running time of almost eleven minutes.  This Minnesota based two-piece combines a lot of different elements from death/grind/groove/crust and I think those are just the main ones that I can hear. The opening track “Waiting to Collapse” creates an […]

A long-standing pillar of sonic strength and consistency, High on Fire has built a body of work that demands your fucking respect, even if the album peaks have slightly varied along the way. The dependable quality of High on Fire’s music is increasingly rare to find in bands that remain active over such a lengthy […]

I have always been a death metal fan, from the moment I first heard it all them years ago – the textures, the percussiveness, the shear brutality. But I have been very slow and finicky about black metal. I was never taken in by the undergrounder-than-thou shit, which I found to have the same amount […]

Hate, the 2012 second album from these Aussie deathcore mongers, was a solid slab of techy modern deathcore/death metal, that grew on me a little bit as time wore on. And now, three years later it appears the hopes of deathcore have been but on TAIM and Holy War as the genre seems to be in a […]

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 […]

Downfall of Nur, both the band name and this album, are inspired in full by the Nuragic civilization that existed on the island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean from the middle Bronze age, until its dissolution in the early Iron age.  The arc of this civilization is represented across the five lengthy tracks.  Immediately I’m […]

For being a band in it’s infant stages of existence, Sweden’s Monolord certainly carries with it an air of age. I am only vaguely familiar with their previous release, Empress Rising, but they seem to convey a very agile & stable blend of doom with accents of the whole Palm Desert scene and an almost […]

Palinopsia are unsigned band from US,  Vermont specifically,  and they bring their take of doom to the metal table with this EP release. They describe their music has blackened doom sludge and that is exactly what you are getting. The black primarily in the vocals with some death vocals scattered thru the songs and the […]

Hailing from Ireland Malthusian’s Below the Hengiform is their debut EP released by Invictus Productions. Ireland has definitely been producing some extreme metal acts in recent years with artists like Primordial, Altar of Plagues (whose members are now in Malthusian) and Abaddon Incarnate to name a few. In listening to Malthusian’s first demo MMXIII it’s […]

The UK is notorious for killer crusty sludge/doom and 9 out of 10 times what you’re going to hear is top-notch.  Let’s face it, having the ultimate doom n’ gloom band Black Sabbath in the country’s history gives them an edge on the competition.  Ghold is following in those footsteps without guitar; a drum n’ […]

Christ…… Just when I think I literally cannot hear anything fresh new and different in metal, along comes Maladie. This 9-person German collective is comprised of folks from various mid-level German Death metal acts like Tombthroat, Deadborn and Spheron, as well as Belgian post-rockers We All Die (Laughing). That totals up to 3 Guitarists, 2 vocalists, a saxophone player and […]

I think most metal/punk folks who have spent time kicking around the underground can agree that splits and compilations are a wholesome part of our musical diet.  My collection is full of them, and I have to say that many of them introduced me to multiple badass bands all in one fell swoop.  To support […]

Where were you the first time you heard death metal/grind? I was at work, listening to tapes I made of a local radio show that played punk/hardcore and a mix of reggae, rap, underground metal and the odd whatever else. They trotted things out in blocks – now bands that would eventually become Seattle grunge, […]

I really enjoyed Bite Your Head Off, the 2012 debut album from Australia’s King Parrot. It was a fun and rollicking blast which hybridized grind, thrash and punk into a fresh and unique sound, spiked with a refreshing sense of humor. Apparently a lot of other folks enjoyed it as well judging by the rising […]

I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the second album from Finland’s Oceanwake, Sunless. Not that I don’t like it or anything, it’s just its sort of in stylistic limbo between traditional melancholic lumbering Finnish doom metal and a more Post Metal ebb akin to country mates Callisto or fellow Europeans like Desert Beneath […]

You never know what you’re going to get from Finland’s Svart Records. I suppose you could say that their staple genre is doom, but within that it could either be the stoner/doom of bands like Domovoyd, Acid King, and Pombagira, the death/doom of Vainaja, Kuolemanlaakso, and Heavydeath, Essenz’s patented black/doom, or the more progressive/psychedelic approach […]

I can close my eyes and envision being in Aokigahara, A forest in Japan at the northwest base of Mount Fuji that is known as a popular place for suicides. The forest apparently has a historic association with Demons.  Enter Osmose Production Record artists Cohol and their second album Rigen.  Describing themselves as ‘Blackened Crystal Death’, […]

Don’t always trust tags that someone pulls out of their ass; always listen and decide for yourself.  The labelling of “post-rock/blackened hardcore” for Vienna auteurs of execution, Seagrave and the debut album Stabwound doesn’t even begin to do justice.  Post-rock always makes me think of something gorgeous, dreamy, hypnotic, etc.  Sure, the guitar work on […]

AAaahh Overkill, to me they are the foundation of all my thrash dreams, hopes and wants. They started for me with their 2nd album Taking Over and I was hooked, the music, the anger, the dark humor and just the overall sonics that they sent to through my speakers. I say sonics because when I […]

It has been more than a thousand years since the minstrels, troubadours, and minnesingers of the Middle Ages strummed their lutes and cooed their poetry to eager and usually royal ears. Obsequiae, if they could travel back to those days, would have lulled the lords and ladies of court into wondrous reverie with a gentle opener […]

The first Hardcore record I ever got was Agnostic Front’s Cause For Alarm. I was in high school and I had never heard anything like it before. It was the early days of the crossover scene and until this point I had been listening to metal exclusively. That quickly changed. The short songs, the vitriol […]

Hot on the heels of Gruesome’s utterly wonderful Savage Land comes another slice of truly tremendous Death worship in the form of False Prophecies. The mysterious entity that is  Undead have chosen to take a different approach to Gruesome however, the latter band choosing to emulate the early Death to such an extent that the resulting […]

“The French female-fronted metal band UNSAFE brings the metal scene to a new level”… or so says the band’s label Mighty Music. A tad ironic, being that that is quite a mighty claim in itself, the problem is that it is nowhere close to the truth. Not that Enter Dark Places is a bad album, […]

I am a giant Kolliasist. His debut with one of my all-time favorite brutal tech death outfits, Nile, happens to also be my all-time favorite Nile record. Blast beats are a given, but his take on the groovier, crushier Nile moments really sold me, and gave the band a compelling depth that has, in my […]

Last year Erik Thomas reviewed a band from Nashville Tennessee called Inferi who released an album called The Path of Apotheosis.  To me that was one of the better melodic death releases of last year and kind of came out of nowhere. Zoom forward to present day Mariestad Sweden and Implode.  Implode was formed in […]