It’s good to see that Incinerate is still hanging in there.  Releasing only their 3rd album since a 2000 demo.  Incinerate drop albums just after the brain cell crushing, wearers of unreadable band shirts have stopped wondering, “whatever happened to them”, snapping their necks back in place with Eradicating Terrestrial Species.   Considering their recent […]

 Okay this album is definitely going to be a grower, but that’s not a bad thing mind you, it’s just at times expectations can be a mindf**k. You anticipate, you dream and dwell on that one moment of what you envision or what you dream about forever ( in this case Sanctuary reforming ) and […]

Having been around since 2000, and with 6 albums under their belt already, Warsaw Poland’s Antigama continue to be one of the most underrated yet productive bands in Grindcore. and album number 7 shows no signs of the band letting up. The Insolent starts off with the very aggressive “Reward or Punishment”.  If one could […]

Man, this is evil stuff.  It’s not fast, it’s actually quite melodic but I’ll be goddamned if this shit doesn’t get by on sheer tonnage alone.  The Dead hail from Australia, a country/continent with a rich heavy scene that doesn’t always get the credit it so rightly deserves.  I’m coming into this review as an […]

Like a lot of you, Drudkh first popped up on my radar with their 2006 release, Blood In Our Wells. It really took me a long time to look beyond the hype that album generated, but I eventually came to appreciate it for what it was. What it wasn’t was The Second Coming of a […]

2015 brings the return of England’s Paradise Lost for their 27th year in existence. It also brings fourth their 14th full length album. In this day and age, it is amazing to have a band with this kind of longevity and productivity. Add to that the fact that the lineup is original except for the drummer, […]

Here is another example of how great French Death Metal bands are. Recueil Morbide, which translates to English to ‘Morbid Collection’ blast their ways into toad throat lovers everywhere this year with the release of their album which just happens to be called Morbid Collection.  If there were any initial knock on this record it […]

I’ve read descriptions of this band as “psychedelic stoner metal”, “psychedelic doom”, “psychedelic (insert genre here)” and I must say, it’s too easy to throw that tag onto a genre if someone doesn’t understand the actually influences regarding a sound being conveyed. With Ufomammut I find that descriptor appropriate but moreso in the vein of […]

So Floridian black metal act Mindscar were around back in the early 00s with a few demos and such and back then, their guitarist/vocalist Richie Brown was the bassist for Trivium for a year, before Heafy and co got famous. But the band faded out of existence after a lone 2001 EP, However Brown reformed the band with in […]

I don’t have much patience with geeker-provenance or hero worship. I was pleased as punch to hear Carcass and Godflesh put out fantastic, true to form records after being away for a while, but for the most part I agree with Death Grips: “Fuck where you’re from, fuck where you’re going, it’s all about where […]

Black Tower is a Canadian trio that play a form of punk/thrash/power/heavy/black metal that’s a perfect fit for Unspeakable Axe Records, and might actually be their best release yet. And while that mish-mash of styles might overwhelm some, it’s going to appeal to a lot of folks, as it’s done with an awesome retro but fun […]

Even in the wake of their reunion tours stretching back to 2009, the reality of a new studio album from Faith No More, the kings of genre-bending alt rock-metal, seemed highly unlikely. At the height of their powers Faith No More shared a strained relationship with each other, a prickly tension and volatile chemistry that […]

Norwegian Avant Garde Heavy Metal has been something of an evolution over the last twenty years.  In looking at Dodheimsgard’s 2015 release, A Umbra Omega we should first start with a trip back to 1996 and a double disc compilation called Blackened: The Black Metal Compilation.  Disc two of this compilation featured a song called,” […]

I might be picking in the wrong season here.  I’m growing a crop of doom/death when the weather consistently lures me towards faster riffs, heavy groove abandon or something that will have me speeding down the highway at 100 mph and swerving between lanes.  The Ukraine’s Torrens Conscientium are not exactly band, but you know […]

Grind is a specific kind of metal that describes, band by band, a single aspect of being, more so than any other kind of metal – or music. The bands that make grind tend to live for that aspect, create for it. Maruta is about tension; sailing riffs on the edge of the world and […]

Symphonics/orchestration and brutal death metal aren’t uncommon bedfellows, but it isn’t exactly a thriving, saturated genre, due to the obvious dichotomy the two style provide. Fleshgod Apocalypse certainly elevated it to critical acclaim and mastered the sound but before that the likes of arguable trendsetters Nocturnus as well as, Agiel, Scrambled Defuncts, Ovid’s Withering and a few […]

I can usually tell of I am going to like or dislike an album after a few moments. A few skips from track to track, hear the vocals, the production etc. I can get a general idea pretty quick. Sure, there are anomalies, growers, late bloomers and stuff I’m just not feeling at that time in […]

So now France is finally joining the European masses like the Czech Republic (Brutally Deceased), Croatia, (Hezera), Italy (Undead Creep), Germany (Revel in Flesh), Poland (Ulcer), Greece (Wreckage) The Netherlands (Funeral Whore), Finland (Morbid Vomit) and even the US (Fatalist) getting in on the Boss HM2, Swedish death metal revival with the duo known as Skelethal. A […]

New Delhi trio Toxoid take an ain’t broke, don’t fix it approach to black metal on their debut album Aurora Satanae.  They avoid shoe gazin’, there are no pop elements, over the top orchestration is left for the London Symphony and you can kiss those clean vocals goodbye.  For those who like it right in […]

For 5 years and three previous albums now, Sweden’s Entrails, reactivated from the 90s has been arguably the forerunner and top band in the Swedish death metal revival. After two killer albums on FDA Rekotz/Dark Descent, they were elevated to the big leagues with 2013s Raging Death, on Metal Blade Records, and didn’t lose a […]

There are some United States Underground acts that can construct rituals of dark atmosphere. Look no further than Naas Alcameth founder of the void inducing beast that is Nightbringer who has created yet another side project of meticulous malebolgias of hellish landscapes which are presented for on the 2015 effort ,The Dreaming I. Naas Alcameth […]

To us mere mortals, ten years is a long time to wait between albums, yet I suppose if you’re a band of time-travelling space pirates, a decade is no time at all. That’s exactly how long it’s been since Sverd’s troupe of avant-garde lunatics unleashed their last magnificent opus, Sideshow Symphonies. So, what’s changed for […]

So this “extreme progressive metal’  movement is becoming I thing I see. The Great Discord, Black Crown Initiate, Ne Obliviscaris, France’s Maladie, and this long running Swedish act named after a subterranean lake in Antarctica are delivering metal that switches on a dime between prog metal, thrash, technical death metal, symphonic metal, power metal and everything else under the metal […]

I was not overly impressed with the 2012 debut Symbiosis, debut from this Florida tech death/deathcore act. There was nothing inherently wrong with it, it was just yet another faceless (no pun intended) modern tech death/deathcore record with little soul and all twiddle and breakdowns. The kind of stuff that Ive heard too many times […]

A slab of brute force melancholy from Poland, Oktor’s full-length debut after a string of mini-albums is a grandstand of kiloton riffs and lighter shading.  They straddle the fence of sadness without getting too weepy for their own good and bring some of the heaviest guitar work I’ve heard in the death/doom across the eight […]