Dear All That Remains: We are writing this letter with heavy hearts, as we regret to inform you that your membership in The Metal Community, LLC is being terminated as of February 24, 2015.  The main issue lies in the fact that your last two albums (including the current one) have been a flat out […]

That special, swampy brand of metal that only seems to come from New Orleans is a sound I just can’t deny.  Even whenever the musical genre in question happens to be grind/death metal you can always expect a murkier, muddier take on the style if it’s Louisiana bred.  Gristnam features members of doom grinders Haarp […]

Back in 2007, the UKs Sarpanitum released one of the best debuts from a UK death metal band of recent memory, Despoilment  of Origin. It was released on Galactic Records, the label owned by Leon Macy the founder of fellow UK death metal act Mithras, who also were making quite a stir in the death metal scene […]

They say imitation is the highest form of flattery. Well, if that’s the case, Lord K Phillipson and his entourage in The Project Hate, should be flattered as fuck by Canadian Robert Kukla and his band, Arbitrator and the debut full length album, Indoctrination of Sacrilege. Now don’t get me wrong-I have no problem with flattery, homage and […]

The Hands of Orlac by Maurice Renard is a tale I’m very familiar with having seen numerous film adaptations of it including the 1960 version with Christopher Lee, The Beast with Five Fingers and The Hand.  What is it about that ol’ genre staple involving disembodied limbs running amuck that is so appealing?  I couldn’t […]

As soon as the broodingly ominous opener of Khariot’s aptly titled Esoteric, “Astralign”, comes to a close, the sheer maddening chaos of “Hydra” makes it immediately apparent that Gavin Foo is not a very big fan of melody – at the very least, he’s made it a point to keep the use of it to […]

“The mouth of hell”. That is what Hadal Maw roughly translates to and the band has released an album that defines that translation with substantial purity. Very much steeped in the realm of death metal, they manage to throw in bits-and-pieces of discordant hardcore to complete a sound that is very reminiscent of modern death […]

I’m not sure what is going on on this album cover, but I’m pretty sure what’s going on with the music: bruising modern grindcore with elements of slam,  death metal and even deathcore. The 15 tracks short sharp bursts and less than 40 minute time plays into the classic grindcore tropes as do the trifecta of […]

There was a time when Belgium’s Shiver Records/The LSP Company were prolific as heck churning out record after record of home grown talent, unusually favoring the chunky, recognizable Belgian sound such as Battalion, Insanity Reigns Supreme, Warbeast Remains, Welkin, Moker, Ordeal, The Seventh and even the odd classic release such as Axamenta’s Ever-Arch-I Tech-Ture. But I had not […]

In the wash-up of 2014 there were inevitably a number of notable under the radar releases that slipped through the net here at Teeth of the Divine. One such later year discovery that I particularly wanted to highlight was the debut album from a young progressive metal outfit. Hungarian band Dreamgrave released an accomplished debut […]

The term ‘cinematic’ gets thrown around a lot these days, as many black, death, and progressive metal acts have become more comfortable with orchestration as a way to add color, texture, or simply grandeur to their sound. It’s not as simple as that, though – you simply can’t layer some heavy Gothic chords atop and […]

2014 was a banner year for the Unique Leader label, which happens to be one of my personal favorites.  With releases from the likes of Fallujah, Inanimate Existence and Omnihility (which all made my year end list), they further cemented their place at the top of the heap for the label with the best and […]

I’m not sure what was going on over at the usually reliable Mighty Music at the end of 2014. After a couple of solid releases in Solbrud,  Planet Rain and Herod, the label sent me a slew of hard rock releases; Ruinside, Distance, 23 Acez, Annominus, Estate, Saint Rebel and such. And all of it pretty awful; Not […]

It’s a difficult task trying to describe a band without using other bands as a jumping off point. I find myself easily slipping into that realm of “so-and-so sound like this aspect of such-and-such but with a little less emphasis on riffing…blah-blah-blah, etc, etc”. I hate having to rely on that but it’s very very […]

When covering the newest release from a group with a storied back catalogue, the question of how to approach the writing always exists.  Of course each album should be judged based on its own merits, but within that set of boundaries other issues arise: how it compares to the last record, how it compares to […]

There are more than likely going to be two camps when it comes to Southern California’s hardcore bruisers Xibalba. One faction will feel their style of super down-tuned chuggtastic hardcore is the heaviest, most punishing sound on the planet and the counterpoint is that they are knuckle dragging simpletons who cant tune guitars or write songs. And while […]

After four years of listening to their fantastic debut, aptly titled Space Grind, news of Psudoku’s Planetarisk Sudoku quickly made it one of my most anticipated releases of 2037 – well, that’s what it says on their bandcamp, anyway. How nice of the aliens to have released it for human consumption 22 years in advance. […]

There are a few similarities between death metal acts Chapel of Disease and Deserted Fear; both German, both of FDA Rekotz, both released solid debuts in 2013 and both recently released their second efforts. The only slight difference is the style of death metal each band plays. While Deserted Fear had a little more modern, chunky […]

Out of the myriad of one man black metal bands out there, Caïna, the brainchild of Andrew Curtis-Brignell, appears to have more staying power than most. It’s easy to see why. Setter of Unseen Snares is Caïna’s fifth full length, and perhaps their most relevant and compelling release so far. From the resigned, tragic nature […]

The debut Where Distant Spirits Remain, from Glasgow’s Falloch was an interesting post rock/black metal/grey metal opus with Agalloch-ian hues. However it was the work of a duo, Andy Marshall and Scott Mclean, and Marshall since left the band (creating more atmospheric black/Celtic metal with Saor, which I highly recommend) leaving McLean to rebuild, and rebuild he has […]

The ability to convey mood is a technique that may be lacking in metal more than it ever has.  As with any art form when it becomes oversaturated, the superficial elements that make up its basic skeleton get amplified over actual substance, making a hollow representation of what could have been a unique statement by […]

I first heard England’s  Sylosis when reviewing their 2008 debut, Conclusion of an Age for Metal Maniacs. As I recall is was a pretty average Unearth/All That Remains clone, that left me with fair to middling opinion of the band. Fast forward to 2012 and the band’s third album Monolith (I missed 2011s Edge of the […]

2014 will go down as the year that Orthodox Black Metal’s literal Satan picked up and headed East out of France.  Spending most of his time in Poland, the great deceiver made an early splash in the headlines with Behemoth’s The Satanist, an album with an extra touch of earnestness for the dark lord.   Being […]

I have reviewed both the first and second albums from Finland’s Decaying, both delivering a stout war mongering style of death metal that delivers a mix of Bolt Thrower/Hail of Bullets and Asphyx (particularity the very Van Drunen-ish is shrieks of Matias Nastolin). And the productive Fins keep producing and getting incrementally better with each release, as the […]

Bloomington, Indiana’s hypothermic quartet Thorr-Axe makes a helluva racket on their second LP, Gates of Winter.  Self-described as “blackened-doom” I’m not about to argue with them and set myself up for some Viking justice.  The grinding rhythms grease their gears with sludgy grooves, knee-deep trudges and begotten abandon while the tonality of the riffage, agoraphobic […]